Open juanis2112 opened 4 years ago
Based on current discussions, there's a few parts to this redesign. I'm listing them here to help make the direction of this issue more clear.
So far I’ve mocked up the “home” page and worked on possibilities for the toolbar. In terms of content, the new home needs basically an index that links to the Spyder docs, Online Help, and the IPython docs and keeps the original message (telling users the easy ways to access help from within the the Editor or Console). I did rewrite this content a little, so here’s the original and my edits for easy critique. Let me know if the way I rewrote it is inaccurate, confusing, or just not wanted.
Original: Here you can get help of any object by pressing Cmd+I in front of it either on the Editor or in the Console. Help can also be shown automatically after writing a left parenthesis next to an object. You can activate this behavior in Preferences > Help. Rewrite: Access the Help pane any time by pressing by pressing Cmd+I with your cursor by any object in the Editor or Console, or by typing a left parenthesis next to an object.
The X icon next to Explore Spyder Docs is a placeholder for the Spyder logo (since that hasn’t been finalized).
This is how it could look if we do not want to use icons to mark each option.
For the most part, I choose toolbar item placement based on browser standards. I’m going to pick apart the changes I made so that it is clear what is being replaced or added compared to the current two toolbars (across what is currently two panes).
The backwards arrow, forwards arrow, and home should look standard (though these are Material icons instead of the current Font Awesome icons). The refresh icon is also similar, but when a refresh is initiated it should change to Material’s “clear” rather than having an almost always inactive stop button as it currently does. This will also help clear up the toolbar.
The circled check on the right is meant to replace the loading bar on the current online help. When something is loaded it will look like this, but I think it could have a separate loading animation with the circle alone (I can mock this up if people think this is a good idea).
The main area I’m still working out is the search bar itself and whether it can be combined with a feature that allows users to drop down select what help resources they want to access (so they don’t always have to go back to home). The first option I presented combines the two, but this second option has a separate search bar and icon drop down. I’m not sure how I feel about this, but I’d love the feedback.
Here is the combined option with the open drop down.
Here is the separated option with and without the drop down.
From the meeting:
From the meeting:
We had an extensive discussion about this trying to figure out how the desired UX behavior and technical needs fit together and what current experiences make sense to keep and which we want to change. We think this is something we need to get more information on how people use help and what they care about. Here are some questions I wrote to get discussion started.
About the meeting:
Internal resources:
External resources:
Idea for the documentation: Maybe have a script that generates it from the existing one to avoid maintaining both.
Complete new design for Home in help pane including: Link to Spyder docs, Link to Online help, Link to IPython docs Original message (without tutorial part)
Sections in Help pane will be displayed in different tabs.
@isabela-pf will be helping us with mock ups to come up with a new design!