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Re: [ui-best-practices-working-group] Should editor show new wizard for empty files?

On 04/21/2017 02:19 PM, Brian de Alwis wrote:
Stepping back, I do remember the confusion from some newcomers to JDT and PDE on how to create a new class. They expected to just open a new file and start coding
I'm not a newcomer and I expect that too. It's only because of habits that one becomes efficient with Eclipse IDE, not because of intuitive workflows. And it's because it requires learning that some users prefer some competitors.
I think we have to get in the mindset of making our UI requiring as less knowledge as possible from users, forget our own knowledge of the IDE when thinking about what's best for users. Then we can consider some basic questions such as "why so many new file wizards?", "how do I get started coding this .java file?" and find some fresher answers to those.

I sometimes wonder if we wouldn't benefit from providing a "tour" for first time users. Or opening a tour when starting previously unseen functionality.
Several issues with this:
* It requires a lot of development to set it up
* It requires heavy maintenance
* The tour definition would become centralized where our model is entirely distributed across projects
* There are big chances that many users skip the tour anyway
* It's not much better than a documentation in term of what we teach and learn
Overall, a tour is not an improvement of UX. The improvement of UX is in improving the workflows that people use to reduce the necessary amount of knowledge and clicks to be successful, not in documenting over and over again some over-complex workflows for simple tasks.
--
Mickael Istria
Eclipse developer for Red Hat Developers
My blog - My Tweets

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