Most GNOME apps have unhelpful Help menus, typically consisting of two items, Contents and About. We propose encouraging developers to include several links to important landing pages in the documentation.

Rationale

There are different ways that the documentation can help a user. There should be menu items in the Help menu to reflect these. This will allow the user to get to a useful page more quickly, and will advertise the availability of helpful docs.

  • View all help topics
  • Getting started
  • Troubleshooting/Common problems
  • Tips and tricks
  • Keyboard shortcuts

Implementation Recommendations

  • There should only be a few items on the menu, to prevent overloading the user.

  • The chosen items should reflect the reason that a user might look in the docs. They shouldn't just blindly replicate the structure of the document.

  • The items should be chosen on an app-by-app basis, although many apps will have a few items in common.

  • There should always be a link to View all help topics

DocumentationProject/HelpMenus (last edited 2010-01-10 18:55:24 by PhilBull)