Repository navigation
Replies: 7 comments 14 replies
|
@prmod3d, thank you, this is a good idea, and you are right that the guide gets harder to find your way in as it grows. Part of it exists: the question mark in every window opens the guide at the matching section. What is missing is help for a single button or field, and that is being built: a help mode in the Help group; you click any button or field, and layerling looks for its name in the guide, in your language, and shows the best match with a button to the section. I will write here when it is out. |
|
@prmod3d, Interactive Help is in 1.82.0: a question mark in the Help group, or Shift+F1. While it is on, click any button, field or window title: layerling asks the guide for its name, in your language, and shows the best match with a button Open in the guide; there the section is outlined. Esc leaves it. A name that the guide never writes finds nothing, and then it says so. Reload the page to get it; the installed app needs a restart. Please tell me what you miss, or where it finds the wrong place. |
|
Oh yes, this is WONDERFUL! Works exactly as imagined and described. I noticed there are a few places I've found so far where the Interactive Help is not available (like the blank areas of the ribbon menu and the page footer). There's a pop-up to let me know nothing can be found in that area if I click on it, but I wonder if a visual cue could also be added to the cursor -- a circle around the question mark with a line through it -- which would be useful for avoiding unnecessary mouse clicks to find something that's not available? If a user still clicked it would bring up the existing alert box, but would otherwise reduce a lot of trial-and-error clicks in the voids. Perhaps in combination with the line-through-circle cue a click wouldn't even be allowable in void areas -- thus eliminating invalid clicks altogether. I also noticed there's a blue bounding box that appears around any valid element when the Interactive Help cursor hovers over an area -- which is a great extra touch! So the visual cursor cue mentioned above may not really be needed... but it wouldn't hurt either if it's easy to add, as it would cover all possible user scenarios. The suggested border around relevant info in the guide eliminates any doubt for the user that they're in the proper place to find the help they're looking for, and they'll know at a glance where the start and end of the relevant section is. This is so incredibly intuitive and satisfying! Everything works precisely as envisioned and I think this will be a huge benefit for all users... myself included. Bravo! I'll give it some torture tests over the next few days to see if I can locate any elements that may be missed or not linked properly, and/or may be giving erroneous info when clicked. Will let you know if I find anything. Just so you know, I'll be making a modest donation to you and the layerling project next Monday, October 19. You're the best! |
|
@prmod3d, thank you, it is good to hear that it works as you imagined, and thank you for the support. The pointer over a place where the help finds nothing will show the "not allowed" sign, a circle with a line, so you see it before you click; a click there still opens the notice. It comes with the next release. Please keep telling me what you find in your tests. |
|
Here are the Interactive Help mismatches I've found so far. To reduce the amount of typing, I've used abbreviations to indicate which help section is affected: S = Summary ELEMENTS in the 3D EDITOR tabTop Menu Icons:
Side Menu Icons:
Footer Area:
ELEMENTS in the SKETCH tabAll common icons with the 3D EDITOR have the same issues Top Menu Icons:
ELEMENTS in the SKETCH > Extrude SketchAll common icons with the 3D EDITOR have the same issues Top Menu Icons:
Side Menu Icons:
ELEMENTS in the SKETCH > Revolve SketchSame as in 'Extrude Sketch' ELEMENTS in the SKETCH > Sweep SketchSame as in 'Extrude Sketch' Will drill down further into subsections later. |
|
An immediate one that comes to mind is the "Center view on selection button" in the left side menu. It has no action at all associated with it via the Interactive Menu cursor. Will check all the remaining areas (and revisit some of the old) over the weekend. |
|
@prmod3d, found it, and thank you for the exact spot. A button that is greyed out, here because nothing is selected, got no answer: the browser sends no mouse event for a disabled button, so the click never reached the help. That held for every greyed-out button, not only this one. I fixed it: with the help on, such a button now answers like the others. It comes with the next release. The two buttons in the Sketch tab that you listed with the same symptom are probably the same cause, but I have not tried them. Please tell me which ones are still silent after the update. |
|
I'm using layerling in App mode (with Google Chrome) and had no problem using the Interactive Help cursor on greyed out items -- of which there's normally a lot if no shapes are selected on the Workplane. It must be a use-in-browser issue which doesn't apply in App mode, so am glad you noticed it! |
|
@prmod3d, thank you, that explains why it did not show up for you in the app window: I found it in a browser tab. After the next release both ways should work. |
|
Here's the second part of the Interactive Help mismatch check. At first I just randomly clicked around to see if anything was amiss from the first batch and didn't see anything -- but then I didn't do a thorough check either. I did find a couple of things which I don't know if they got missed being fixed, or I just didn't notice them before:
Okay, carrying on, here's more mismatches: Panels Activated From Ribbon Bar MenuSHAPES > Add shapes Panel
VISIBILITY > Show object list
MODIFY > Pattern
MODIFY > Hole Pattern
MODIFY > Face
MODIFY > Split
MODIFY > Chamfer edges
MODIFY > Fillet edges
MODIFY > Hollow body
MODIFY > Delete face
MODIFY > Simplify mesh
ARRANGE > Align faces
ARRANGE > Import Everything is okay ARRANGE > Export
MANAGE > Workspace settings This one is massive and I'll tackle at another time! Property Panels for all the Shapes Also massive, will tackle later. |
|
@prmod3d, thank you for the second list, it shows a pattern I could work with. The help asks the guide for the name of the element, and a word like "Cancel", "Depth" or "Cylinder" is written in dozens of places, so the best match was often the wrong one. I changed it:
I checked a sample of your list in the editor (the Chamfer window, the shape library, the cube and the camera bar), not every single line, so please run your list again after the next release and tell me what is still off. The Workspace settings and the shape properties are still to come, as you said. |
|
Testing all the objects and elements and creating that list took a LOT of time, and I don't relish the thought of going through all of it again! I'll do some quick random tests as before, and then leave it for the community (or myself) to find over time as they show up in normal use. I suspect some of them wouldn't even be noticed by the average user who's not as picky as I was about clicking on the less important targets like bounding box containers. |
|
@prmod3d thank you, and no need to go through all of it again: that list was a lot of work, and it showed me the cause, which is fixed in a way that should take care of most of it. If you or someone else find a place where the help still leads to the wrong part of the guide, just write it down here. |
|
@prmod3d, it is out in 1.88.0: in a tool window the generic buttons, fields and sliders now ask about the window itself, the question mark of a window leads to its section, and the shape library, the object list, the Export window, the view cube and the camera bar answer with their section. Reload the page to get it; the installed app needs a restart. Please tell me where the help still leads to the wrong place. |
|
Most of the ones that are working just lead to a generalized section in the User Guide with a lot of Settings-related info. Intuitively, when using an Interactive Help I would expect detailed help on the specific option I was clicking on, so I found it a bit tedious to have to scan-read through a major section of the guide to find what I was looking for each time. Also, I couldn't find any help on using the colour palette selectors, which have become mini-apps within themselves -- especially in the case of the main one used to change object colours from the Properties panel. Some users (especially newer ones or those not already familiar with image-editing software) may require help with using the colour-picker syringe, HEX, RGB, and HSL values, as well as the process of saving custom colours to the palette. Here's the Interactive Help mismatches for the Workspace settings from the MANAGE menu: Workspace SettingsCommon Area
Appearance
Measurement
Workplane
Shape defaults
Saved history
|
|
@prmod3d the help now leads to the setting you click, in 1.92.0. The Workspace settings have their own sections in the guide, one for each group (the look and the colours, the light and shadows, the measures, selecting and moving, the view, the plate and the grid, the shape defaults, the saved history), and the colour card of a body has Choosing colours: the palette, your own colours, the recently used and the pin that keeps one. The fields, sliders, colour buttons and lists that gave nothing, the Fast mode switch among them, find their section too. The other languages of the guide still have the old long paragraph. Please tell me where it still leads to the wrong place. Reload the page to get it; the installed app needs a restart. |
|
All your additions and enhancements to Interactive Help greatly improve the usability of this feature. Am glad you put in the extra time to create and link specific content, and I hope people will take advantage of using it. I promote this help feature all the time when replying to YouTube video comments about questions people have about using layering. I've boasted about what a great learning aid the Interactive Help can be, and now I'm very pleased that it is! |
Uh oh!
There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.
Uh oh!
There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.
This could be a complicated idea... or maybe not, as layerling continues to impress and surprise me!
As layerling continues to evolve and grow, the learning curve is getting steeper -- especially for newcomers and those who don't keep up to date with the fast pace of all the incremental updates. More and more it's going to be necessary to consult the User Guide, and it's already becoming difficult to figure out where to navigate in the guide to find the location of relevant help. This becomes even more pronounced when a novice user may not be familiar with all the jargon and language used in the 3D Design world, and isn't even really sure what the proper terms are for what they're looking for.
Enter the "Interactive Help" cursor. It starts off as an icon similar to that used in many other types of software for the past few decades, which most people are already familiar with: a distinctive cursor with a question mark (?) attached to it. This could be added to the existing HELP menu on the ribbon bar.
When a user is in any section of the program (including all the subsection drop-downs of the Shape Properties Panel for example) they can select the Interactive Help cursor and then hover over a GUI element they want help with. The Interactive Help cursor would not replace the main cursor for navigating the program, just used to access dedicated help when at the landing zone of normal cursor navigation.
When the hovered cursor detects that there's extended help for an item, the question mark would change to the icon currently used for accessing the "Quick Guide" (the open book). This would be the visual cue that Interactive Help is available and can be activated for whatever they're hovering over.
When the element is clicked, a window will pop up (similar in size to the "Keyboard Shortcuts") and a summary of relevant information would populate the window -- perhaps extracted directly from the much shorter "Quick Guide". If the user receives the level of help they need then they simply close the window and carry on.
If they require extended help, then there's a "Detailed Help" (or whatever label) button at the bottom of that window which does one of two things -- whichever is easier to implement:
In the second method, the icing on the cake would be if the relevant section also had a prominent coloured border drawn around it, so there was no confusion where the requested info started and ended.
I realize that with all the additional translated languages being included, as well as continued expansion of the User Guide itself as new features become available, this idea could be too large a project to tackle at the moment. However, at this point in the development of layering, and its ever-increasing popularity, it would be a shame if people coming over from Tinkercad felt overwhelmed by all the extra options and ended up a bit daunted by the sudden extra learning curve. Intuitively quick and interactive access to the User Guide could make a world of difference.
Heck, I've been following all the changes in this project for a while now, testing most of them as they're implemented, and I'm already beginning to feel like I'm falling behind and needing little refreshers now and then on how to do something, or to utilize the full potential of a feature -- and I often find myself aimlessly poking through the Guide trying to find what I'm looking for, and then trying to remember where it is again later when I need a reminder!
All reactions