Dynamic help menus in action with Nautilus.
Isn't it more like context-aware help menus? Pretty cool anyway! Not entirely convinced about the search-entry-on-menu UI though...Oct 25, 2011
My blog post has a bit more information about what's going on in this video: http://blogs.gnome.org/shaunm/2011/10/25/searchable-menu-video/
It is context-aware, to the extent that the application sets context. Basically, you create a GtkHelpMenu or a GtkHelpButton and give it a tag. In this case, I tagged the menu with "nautilus-main". Each Mallard help page then declares a set of tags, and the menu is populated with pages with a matching tag. If you have a window that goes between different states (e.g. a tabbed properties dialog, like the one in Nautilus), you can change the tag dynamically in the application, and the menu or button will be repopulated accordingly.
So as long as developers set good tags for their help menus and buttons, help writers don't ever have to beg them for code changes to change what topics show up. We just tag the help pages, and the rest is magic.Oct 25, 2011
What is the button to the right of the search entry bar (it looks like a dot with two arrows pointing out from it)?Oct 25, 2011- Jim, that's a Share button that may or may not stay in Yelp 3.4. It lets you send a help link to a chat contact, email a help link, or copy the help location.Oct 25, 2011
It would be nice to have the most relevant help "Rename a file or folder" come up first considering that we are talking about nautilus. I guess this is an issue with 'tags'?Oct 26, 2011- It's not the tags, just the (not-displayed) desc elements. The desc for "Edit folder bookmarks" is "Add, delete, and rename bookmarks in the file manager.", hence the match. I plan to sort the results by page type (task, problem, question, guide, etc) the way Yelp's quick-search does. Though that wouldn't change the sort order in this case.Oct 26, 2011
- Also, it arguably makes more sense to match on the desc when you show the desc. Yelp's quick-search does. This menu does not. But we frequently do strategic synonym-stuffing in desc elements to help search results.Oct 26, 2011
This is wow.Nov 22, 2011
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