Help dialogues that take the current state of an application interface into account.
1
vote
1answer
35 views
Dynamic help on an already cluttered screen [closed]
One part of our application is providing an analytical display of data on different parts of customer's website, this is achieved by using layover tiles that expand with data on rollover.
We would ...
4
votes
2answers
89 views
What is the name for a pattern featuring helper text in a semi-transparent overlay?
I am seeing an emerging design pattern in web apps that is used for helping new users get oriented to a page or application.
It consists of showing a diagram with succinct helper-text over a ...
26
votes
8answers
1k views
Do people actually use tooltips?
I know I use them, and my peers use them, but how much does the average user actual use tooltips to figure out functionality?
5
votes
2answers
209 views
Context sensitive help - making sure they use it
I want to add a context-sensitive help to my interface. It's a complex of numerous screens and data fields, intended for the trained enterprise user.
Following this question and this one about why ...
15
votes
2answers
452 views
What happened to “What's this?” help?
"What's this?" help or context-sensitive help* used to be commonplace in Windows applications a few years ago. Dialog windows had an additional "?" button in the top right, that when clicked, gave you ...
3
votes
4answers
715 views
Why is embedded help not popular?
I'm wondering why modern help systems are more passive than active? For example, each good guide through something look like this:
So why we don't see this directly on website (service provider), ...
7
votes
4answers
428 views
Context sensitive help for wordy user preferences
Current UI
Here is a poorly designed panel on a preferences dialog for the open source audio editor 'Audacity'. I'd like to do something about it.
How it got that way
In the past the text beside ...
19
votes
5answers
2k views
Best practices for online help
we're currently developing a fairly complex web portal. To improve the user experience, we want to provide a context-sensitive online help system that can aid the user in understanding certain aspects ...
