Last modified: 2014-11-17 00:14:27 UTC
I could only find one major button that leads to the help pages - the one at the top toolbar. Ideally, there should be help buttons in every context - dialog boxes, inspector, plugins, etc.
At https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback&oldid=572181319#Inserting_reference there are comments that the instruction manual is too difficult to find, and requests that contextual help be added to the various dialogs. These help links should obviously open in a new window/tab, and the target needs to be configurable on wiki as help pages are not static and get split/merged/reorganised over time.
Maybe, the way to make the target page configurable can be creating a fixed redirect page for each link, so that we can change the redirect target.
As a start, maybe add the (?) icon next to each of the page settings controls so we can give some blurb for users? I'm happy to write the copy on the commits. :-)
Change 142468 had a related patch set uploaded by Alex Monk: Allow FieldLayouts to have help text https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/142468
Change 142468 merged by jenkins-bot: Allow FieldLayouts to have help text https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/142468
So I suppose now the job is to start writing copy…
So for adding these to the page settings controls, it should now just be a case of adding the new messages and using them as the config.help for each setting's FieldLayout. James, are you planning to do this?
It looks like some work was done in Gerrit change #147751 and then reverted
Change 159095 had a related patch set uploaded by Alex Monk: Make help button for FieldLayout frameless again https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/159095
Change 159095 merged by jenkins-bot: Make help button for FieldLayout frameless again https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/159095
Change 159104 had a related patch set uploaded by Alex Monk: Provide contextual help for the page settings dialog's controls https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/159104
First one done. We'll seek feedback on this approach and then roll out for the rest of the dialogs.
Change 159104 merged by jenkins-bot: Provide contextual help for the page settings dialog's controls https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/159104
Change 160371 had a related patch set uploaded by Jforrester: Add contextual help to all remaining meta dialog controls https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/160371
Change 160371 merged by jenkins-bot: Add contextual help to all remaining meta dialog controls https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/160371
The page settings ("meta") dialog now has a complete set of contextual help. Will wait for further user feedback before doing the rest of the dialogs.
Did we get any feedback?
