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on the Orion call today, McQ wondered if there were things we could learn from "cue card" style user assistance to guide the user through multi-page, multi-site tasks. This got me to thinking. We already know we need to define some sequenced tasks for the landing page. (see bug 343290 comment 3) In bug 343011, John mentioned grouping related tasks into a wizard-like thing (for example importing from multiple sources) Desktop users are used to wizards for sequenced tasks. I'm wondering if we could generalize the landing page concept into a sequenced task definition extension point. Things that could be defined: - when does the task apply/become available - icon and description for the task - list of links that comprise the task, including which are required vs. optional - some way to string together commands in between steps (or a command as a step). The command part would allow us to do things like download a file, or push a file to git, etc. programmatically. These sequenced tasks could be hosted in a number of ways: - listed on a landing page or cue card, but it's up to user to manage the links - hosted inside a lightweight wizard-esque dialog that has a very skinny navigation trim but otherwise puts the main page in an iframe perhaps browser extensions/add-ons could be built to deal with these in even cooler ways (grouped in a panorama, etc.) We could generalize this a bit to define some kind of sequenced task definition extension that included stuff like:
marking m8. I'm not proposing that this entire infrastructure be done for M8, but that we explore the general concept while working on the landing page.
Sounds cool. Since all tasks and resources are hyper-linkable this kind of thing should be much easier than in Eclipse desktop. The obvious candidates to me are a "get stuff into my workspace" cheatsheet/workflow, and assistance with the more complex git workflows.
generalize in next release.
McQ suggested that we have a distinct link style for showing when you are moving through a workflow, vs. the link style for random other links.. Interesting idea.
I'm working on a flavor of this while working on bug 345622 and bug 377426. I'd like orion.help.tasks to serve as the defining extension point for "sequenced tasks." More detail is in bug 377426
I talked to Simon some about this, and in the end I backed off the general concept for 0.5. There is still a good idea here, and in order to link up commands into an automated task, we would have to support the notion of piping commands, which means commands would have a return value. This way, we could link the output of one command into a parameter in the next command. If we start looking at this in any detail, we need to look at GCLI commands, which have return values and could presumably be piped on the command line.
Closing as part of a mass clean up of inactive bugs. Please reopen if this problem still occurs or is relevant to you. For more details see: https://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/orion-dev/msg03444.html
