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Bug 39297

Summary:	[Welcome] Usability - use cascading menu for Welcome screens instead of ...
Product:	[Eclipse Project] Platform	Reporter:	Jim Lewis <jimlewis>
Component:	UI	Assignee:	Nick Edgar <n.a.edgar>
Status:	RESOLVED INVALID	QA Contact:
Severity:	normal
Priority:	P3	CC:	jkobal, konradk, santosg
Version:	2.1	Keywords:	usability
Target Milestone:	3.0
Hardware:	PC
OS:	Windows 2000
Whiteboard:

Description Jim Lewis

2003-06-24 23:17:42 EDT

I recently conducted a usability study in which new users (voice or HTML 
programmers) installed IBM's WSSD and a plugin toolkit (IBM Voice Toolkit 
4.1.1).  All users had problems that would have been eased by reading the 
Welcome page, but even though they all ran through the Help menu, no one found 
the Welcome page for the Voice Toolkit.  All of the other choices under Help 
that lead to a sub-menu cascade, but the Welcome choice is "...", which means 
that users have to click the choice to bring up a separate dialog for selecting 
a Welcome screen.  I observed the users running the pointer through the various 
Help options, and seeing them review the choices that cascaded while 
consistently passing over the Welcome choice.  Please make the mechanism for 
displaying the available Welcome pages the same as the mechanism used for Cheat 
Sheets -- a cascading menu.

Comment 1 Konrad Kolosowski

2003-06-24 23:29:52 EDT

Thanks for reporting the problem.  It falls under Platform-UI component.

Comment 2 Nick Edgar

2003-06-25 09:47:43 EDT

Interesting data point.  So users who are menu surfing to discover 
functionality generally don't explorer further, even if the menu item is 
labelled "Welcome...".

Comment 3 Jim Lewis

2003-06-25 11:06:45 EDT

Part of the problem is they don't necessarily know that they would benefit from 
viewing the Welcome page, or even that the Welcome page for the recently 
installed plugin even exists, so why would they click Welcome...?  A cheat 
sheet for the plugin will pop into view, and could catch the user's eye, but 
this won't happen for a welcome page in the current design.

Comment 4 Michael Van Meekeren

2004-05-25 14:14:18 EDT

The support for this has changed in R3.0