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.
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