Hi, first of all: it is a great idea to add help buttons to all dialogs. Not only that it makes it more obvious that GIMP has a help system, but it also offers the opportunity of providing *real* context sensitive help. That's exactly what we once-in-a-while users need 8-) I checked the gnome hig to see if there are rules when to apply a help button to dialogs, but unfortunately, that section is missing. However, the general rule should be: 'If a dialog requires further action and a specific help is available, provide a help button.' That means - a simple confirmation dialog where no further settings/actions can be performed does not need to have a help button. - if no help is available for a dialog, do not provide the help button as it will confuse and annoy the user (it will keep the user from calling help in the future. Does help_func check that?) - if possible, provide context sensitive help (open the corresponding chapter in the help pages). Please also make sure that the help button appears at the same location in each dialog. Best place it at the lower left edge, possibly leaving some space to the action buttons (I know, this will make the dialog even broader, but it will also aid to unclutter the layout). Hope that was of help, greetings /ellen On Mon, 2004-10-04 at 16:33, Sven Neumann wrote: > Hi, > > the responses have been very positive so far, so I've given this a > little more testing. There are a couple of dialogs where the help > button is not appropriate and just looks odd. These are mainly > confirmation dialogs like for example the one you get when you close > an image. I suggest that we don't set a help-id on such dialogs. We > can set the help_func so that pressing F1 opens the help-browser with > the default page but there would not be a help button. In particular > this means removing the following help-ids: > > #define GIMP_HELP_FILE_NEW_CONFIRM "gimp-file-new-confirm" > #define GIMP_HELP_FILE_SAVE_OVERWRITE "gimp-file-save-overwrite" > #define GIMP_HELP_FILE_CLOSE_CONFIRM "gimp-file-close-confirm" > #define GIMP_HELP_FILE_QUIT_CONFIRM "gimp-file-quit-confirm" > #define GIMP_HELP_EXPORT_CONFIRM_DIALOG "gimp-export-confirm-dialog" > > Would that make sense? > > There are a couple of other dialogs where the help button disturbs the > dialog layout and I am sure there are some dialogs that I didn't look > at yet. So if you agree with the above change I will investigate what > needs to be done to make the help button configurable. If it turns out > that this is feasible, I would commit this change so that it can see > some more testing with the 2.1.6 release. > > > Sven > _______________________________________________ > Gimp-developer mailing list > Gimp-developer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer -- ______________________________________________________ Ellen Reitmayr email: reitmayr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Usability Engineer mobil: +49.177.3325867 relevantive AG fon: +49.30.23455630 Zehdenicker Str. 21 fax: +49.30.23455639 10119 Berlin web: www.relevantive.de _______________________________________________________
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