Audacity Forum

Hi Gale,

thanks for your comments. I hope to be able to change your mind and get you to support this proposed change.

<<<On the whole I would prefer to improve visibility and contents of the "New users may want to look at" panel.>>>
I disagree with this for a couple of key reasons:
1) I believe that the tutorials are also for the benefit of, and used by, mature users as well as novices. And thus should be in the main body of the contents - the blue TOC (and not in the yellow "New users may want to look at" box at all).
2) In the yellow "New users may want to look at" box the "Getting Started" links to the "Quick Help" page which itself links to the key tutorials - and we could add other tutorial links there for novices if required. So newbies get their tutorial links that way.


<<<I don't especially like all that screen estate for the Tutorials>>>
I would buy that argument were it not for the fact that this new block added a mere 6cm to the length of the TOC - but today I have trimmed the descriptive texts in the left block to effect a 25% reduction in screen estate of the Tutorial block, it now takes only 4.5cm. See: version 2


<<<I don't understand your logic about losing the yellow panel and the sidebar when you scroll down - you will lose a new "Tutorials" panel when you scroll up or down past it as well. >>>
My logic is that the Navigation Panel is low visibility anyway and when you scroll down to the meat of the main page i.e. the blue TOC section, which is where the reader's focus is intended to be, then the nav panel is clear off the screen.

I agree that even within the blue TOC the new Tutorials panel can be scrolled off the screen - but then so can any of the panels, as the blue TOC occupies more than one screenful (even in full-screen mode). So that argument does not really hold water

<<<a few users have said they would like to be able to find the Tutorials more easily and one suggested exactly what is being suggested here>>>
Since this is the case and you cite only a couple of users who want to avoid clutter - can I please urge you to throw your support behind this proposed change.

We can then see what feedback it brings from users. If it is mostly negative then we can always revert.

I am fairly against extending the "New Users ..." yellow panel. That panel itself already takes up 3cm (plus padding) of screen estate - and once you are no longer a new user than it is an irrelevant panel that gets in the way of the blue TOC


Thanks and best regards,

WC

Gale Andrews wrote:Do you still want me to put a link to the Forum in the Manual? I think we need a link, but I'm not sure if it should be in the Sidebar - if it is, it has implications for the offline manual that is included in the downloads.

There already is one Gale

It is on this page: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/How_to_get_help which is linked to from the Main page.

WC

waxcylinder wrote: I hope to be able to change your mind and get you to support this proposed change.

I've trimmed the text on all lines where needed (not just for your tutorials) so there is now no overflow (here, anyway) at 1024 x 768 (second TOC underneath yours): version 2


I'm not sure you need any text description for the tutorials, but the trimming makes enough space for your idea to be viable for me (and gives the section some room to grow when we add more tutorials).

That said, and accepting the Tutorials were a little under-exposed before, I'm not convinced it's the best solution to making them more visible.

* As tutorials would be removed from the yellow panel, they are likely to be at least one scroll farther down on the page body than now, and on lower resolutions there will probably be no visibility in the second scroll (navbox will have disappeared, but blue Tutorials panel not come into view).

* The blue panel is within the main colour scheme so doesn't stand out visually

* While Tutorials are as you say not only for "new users", they are predominantly for them and I would not expect them to have such repeated use as the rest of the material - hence the "clutter" argument

* Structurally it seems kind of odd - you have Foundations, Advanced issues then go "back" in perceived difficulty to more basic tutorials.

* To me, tutorials are still "different" from the rest of the content in the blue panels (which is either "Reference" or only partially expository).

I suppose all of the above could be mitigated by to some extent by putting Tutorials as the first of the blue panels which is actually the order in the navbar. I'm quite strongly inclined to have them as the first blue panel if we try this.

My money would still be on being more inventive with the yellow panel. It doesn't have to be for "new users" only. I'm beginning to see it as a "How To..." panel:

* How to find the different parts of the interface ("Impatient" image")
* How to "quick links" to point to the solution to your exact problem (Quick Help)
* How to Tutorials (illustrated walkthroughs)

One of the criticisms made is that it's still too difficult to find answers to "how do I" :

You want a big teachers' image not those close printed blue and white lines - u can list the different subjects on the page u come to when you click on the teacher

Getting Started isn't simple enough - we need pictures with 1, 2, 3

went up and down the page many times before I saw getting started

spent an hour trying to find how to trim the first 30 seconds of my tune

didn't say how to record Internet Explorer

Granted the last one, that's not in Quick Help (but is in the FAQ) ... but that problem is inexorably tied up with device selection.




Gale

waxcylinder wrote:

Gale Andrews wrote:Do you still want me to put a link to the Forum in the Manual? I think we need a link, but I'm not sure if it should be in the Sidebar - if it is, it has implications for the offline manual that is included in the downloads.

There already is one Gale

It is on this page: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/How_to_get_help which is linked to from the Main page.

WC

Yes but it's not a direct link and almost at the bottom of the page. IIRC Steve wanted better direct links to Wiki and Forum though I think Forum is more important. Maybe a link could go in that yellow box if we expand it?



Gale

Gale,

Many thanks for your thoughtful feedback - much appreciated as always. And thanks too for the text trimming I agree that helps.

<<<Structurally it seems kind of odd - you have Foundations, Advanced issues then go "back" in perceived difficulty to more basic tutorials.>>>
Actually you could take the view that the eye is drawn vertically from "Foundations" down to "Tutorials" and on down to "Reference" - with the "Advanced issues" off in right-field visually.

As an experiment I did make a mock-up with the Tutorials at the top and it just didn't look right.

So here is my current mock-up (and one which I think could be ready for implementation): version 3
May we go with is version for now please ?


=======================================================

I have been giving serious thought to your other points, particularly regarding clutter, which led me to consider a further re-arrangement of the front page. I would propose:
1) lose the yellow-box altogether
2) Move the two yellow-box items (Audacity for the impatient and "Getting Started") into the "Tutorials" section in the TOC - and note that this eats no additional screen estate as they neatly fill an existing gap. Not least because they are part of the manual and thus should really be in the Table Of Contents.
3) Rename the "Tutorials" section to "How To ..." to fit with your desire for a "How To"
4) Additionally I propose that the two blue boxes be moved near to the bottom of the Main page just after the "Miscellaneous section of the TOC and above the notes on white background (Links/Screenshots/Copyright). The blue boxes are the one that start: "The Audacity Manual current at time of release ..." and "There are no complete translations of this Manual to other languages..."

This proposal should address much of the “scrolling issues” that you raise as the reader would be sooner into the TOC.

I have made a mock-up of how the TOC would look under this proposal, but have not yet mocked up the full front page (I would prefer to wait to do that until the Tutorials are incorporated in the TOC – baby steps). See: version 4

WC

Peter, although you said you were moving "Audacity for the impatient" and "Getting Started" into the "Tutorials" section in version 4, you actually put them into "Foundations". I think that's wrong structurally and isn't going to help people find those at all.

I agree that if we try this, the only logical outcome is to remove the yellow panel, but having the "How to" panel as the second panel just seems to defeat the purpose - people won't find it ...

I don't think it's vital the example workflows have their own links so here is my version 5 with the "Impatient" and "Getting Started" links replacing the example workflows. If we want to use more space there, we could link to specific parts of the Quick Guide, though this whole section is pretty much under review at the moment. I also made your "Tutorials" header a link.

I still think the current v5 "How To" panel would have a better chance of success as a standalone panel instead, (yellow or whatever colour) above the blocks of "white on blue" panels. I don't think that makes the Tutorials or quick how to's less a part of the Manual. I don't know why we're discounting this as an option - reading the feedback above it seems to me that is what is needed.

Note that Quick Help was in fact always seen (more than I wanted it to be) as a separate part of the Manual, hence how it appears now in the Help menu.

Unfortunately the note divs at the top for "The Audacity Manual current at time of release ..." and "There are no complete translations..." are very important for the online version (they do not appear in the manual bundled with the software). We desperately need translators and only get about 1 in 10 people who ask for an account on the Manual who actually end up helping. The other div probably could be trimmed if we made modifications to the page it links to.




Gale

Gale Andrews wrote:I don't think it's vital the example workflows have their own links so here is my version 5 with the "Impatient" and "Getting Started" links replacing the example workflows. If we want to use more space there, we could link to specific parts of the Quick Guide, though this whole section is pretty much under review at the moment. I also made your "Tutorials" header a link.

Hey I think we're getting close Gale - I really like most of what you've done with that Version-5 very much. I totally agree that the sample workflows don't need that visibility - my primary aim with this proposal was to give a little more prominence to the Tutorials.

I have created a version 6 based on your V5 with the following minor changes:

1. "Tutorials" and "How Do I" swapped over - I just think it's slightly better that way round, but if you would prefer I'd be happy to revert it back tour your V5 layout

2. reverted "Readme Articles" to "Using Audacity" - I really don't like that use of Readme. More typically a Readme is a single document that comes with a release (or a piece of kit) with most essential information contained therein. This section contains many articles and not all of them are essential reading - many folk can, and probably do, get on fine without ever reading the "Help with Advanced Issues" subsection.

3. renamed "How do I's" to "How do I ..." Though we may find a better title for this later - but I did hate that apostrophe.

Gale Andrews wrote:I still think the current v5 "How To" panel would have a better chance of success as a standalone panel instead, (yellow or whatever colour) above the blocks of "white on blue" panels. I don't think that makes the Tutorials or quick how to's less a part of the Manual. I don't know why we're discounting this as an option - reading the feedback above it seems to me that is what is needed.

I'm actually not discounting that as an option. I just think that it looks more visually coherent to have these items in the blue Table of Contents.

So what I propose is that we go ahead with the current mock-up version 6 and remove the current yellow panel, as I believe that is an improvent over the current version. Then we can consider our design options after that.

Peter.

Version 6 with the 3 changes (all really good) seems close enough to implement. +1

In clicking around I notice that the Quick Guide page:
http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Quick_Guide
starts with a yellow box--the guideline suggests we start with a green box and almost every other page does so. Is there some reason to diverge from standard practice on this page?

Edgar,

it looks like the into bit on that page is not actually part of the page - so I assume that it is embedded in the table of the GUI elements, like the TOC (and I've no ide whare that table is stored).

I agree it should be a <div class="intro"> ... </div> and that should make it the regular green box.

Do you know how to change it?

Update: I see that you do know how

Peter.

waxcylinder wrote:Edgar,

it looks like the into bit on that page is not actually part of the page - so I assume that it is embedded in the table of the GUI elements, like the TOC (and I've no ide whare that table is stored).

I agree it should be a <div class="intro"> ... </div> and that should make it the regular green box.

Do you know how to change it?

Peter.

It is part of an Element, I changed it but doubt that TPTB will approve of the change. I think it should be removed from the Element and added as an intro div or advice div as appropriate.