Version: 3.1.2 (using KDE KDE 3.1.2) Installed from: SuSE RPMs OS: Linux KDE's "What's this?" item could use a whole lot of polish and feautre additions. One of the main problems is that there is no way to know if there actually is any help text to be found without clicking on every single interface element you want to learn more about. Therefore, I suggest that once the help item is clicked, it only looks like a mouse and ? mark when there is actually a help text for the item the mouse is hovering over. If there is no help text for the interface element that the help item is hovering over than the question mark should be enclosed in a circle with a diagonal line crossing through it to indicate that there is no help item for the item which the user is hovering over. This is an unintrusive way to bring more efficent help to the user and help contributors give KDE more polish by creating help text for items which do not have it. Documentation is key, and the user/developer documentation is obsolete in many parts, this is a great step in the right direction.
I suspect this belongs in Qt.
One way to make "What's this?" items useful and show all available ones without needing to change much code (afaics) would be already showing "What's this?" items on hovering the respective GUI elements, instead waiting for an explicite click which can only be done once per "What's this?" activation.
Yes, Datschge that could be away to do it, its just that it might becomeintrusive, if I rest my mouse over a button while I read somethinga nd than a what's this item pops up that's annoying, besides tooltips can still be used. Anyway, sicne this is a Qt bug, where do I report it? Does trolltech have something like what GNOME, DE, mozilla etc. have for bug reporting, maybe a Qt bugzilla? Bugzilla is probably one of the best things for bug hunting allowing people everywhere to easily submit bugs, contribute patches, screnshots, etc. view the top bugs or wishes see graphs etc. I hope they at least have an internal one because they don't know what they're missing ;)
qt-bugs@trolltech.com
Alex, I think you misunderstood me. Of course the "What's this?" items should not appear everytime but only after clicking the question mark button in your window decoration, just like now. The only difference between the current behavior and my suggested behavior is that with the current behavior you first click on the question mark button for activating "What's this?", then click again now onto an element hoping it will actually pop up a respective "What's this?" item but usually resulting in simply nothing. What I suggest is that you don't click the element but just hover it for getting a pop up if available, and using any mouse button to deactivate "What's this?" again. Am I still unclear? And I don't think what I mentioned above needs changes in QT or heavy changes anywhere else.
Oh, I understand what you mean now. That sounds very good, but I have a few suggestions. Use the hover idea, except wait about 1-3 seconds before displaying the help text and just like in my previous suggestion, if there is no helptext over the hovered item, the "?" mark next to the mouse cursor should be inside a circle with a diagonal line through it. I think this is the best way to implement it.
*** Bug 62067 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Another way that I have thought of is adding some visual cue to a widget / element that has help related to it. Some very small question mark on the side of the widget, or similar. That would make it easier to directly see which widgets has help available, and which has not. Designing this cue to be unintrusive and blend in could be a challenge though.
I vote for this bug. For me "What's this ?" are VERY important to put KDE into lambda users hands. KDE have a lot of configurations options (it's not a reproche : I LOVE it) and users don't know all options do. "What's this ?" are essentiation to don't lost time / trys... IMHO, ALL widgets must have a (non triviale, of course) explain (What's this ?) on what they do, what are them implications... Especially for config windows : we are currently lacking a lot. Because it's well known that users never read documentations. And they would musn't with a good interface. And helps are very long to load and we then must search / browse to find. So "What's this ?" system is important. We must do it very fast to have help on all widgets. > Use the hover idea, except wait about 1-3 seconds before > displaying the help text and just like in my previous > suggestion, if there is no helptext over the hovered > item, the "?" mark next to the mouse cursor should be > inside a circle with a diagonal line through it. Why ? It's time confuming and users could say : - "hey ! nothing happens : I will click" => Back to normal mode :-/ - Even if For me this time isn't needed anyway because we already have clicked on [?] (or Shift+F1), so we want to be (and are) in help mode : no work to be done unless we quit this mode : IMHO this should be as fast as possible : we quickly hover the mouse on each widgets for search of immediatly displayed help. With wait time... we can't "quickly" run over : we always must wait to view if widget have or not an info. OpenOffice.org act be "immediate show on hovering" and it's pretty usable and I like it ! It's a pleasure to discover the interface :) > Another way that I have thought of is adding some visual cue > to a widget / element that has help related to it. Some very > small question mark on the side of the widget, or similar. > That would make it easier to directly see which widgets has > help available, and which has not. Perhapse... But first of all, widgets must have helps. If yes, the question of having indiquation don't need to exist.
Thread to watch: http://lists.trolltech.com/qt4-preview-feedback/2004-12/msg00384.html#msg00384
Foundation exists in today's Qt4 snapshot.
Solved. I don't know if in Qt or kdelibs but this functionality has being there since KDE 4.0 IIRC