ZTree.com  | ZEN  | About...  

 Index   Back

Rename Tab Suggestion   [ZEP]

By: John Gruener     Orlando, Florida  
Date: Nov 13,1999 at 07:30
In Response to: Rename Tab Suggestion (Charles Schubach)

> That is a statement valid for you, me and may be
> for most of the community

As you might realize if you've seen a good number of my postings, I agree with you 100% on the need to make ZTree as intuitive and self-explanatory as possible. I did not mean to imply that we (or Kim) should just live with this situation. I suggest whenever possible ways to explain things better. The menu, however IS very crowded in places, and it is the nature of the XTree interface that is making it more so.

> I'm afraid we hardly can change such user's
> attitude without providing
> at least a most complete help within ZTree itself.
> This help should not only be the help file itself
> but also the [F1] indication
> on the screen.

I agree again that the F1 Help should be displayed on every screen, and further, that it should go to the appropriate context-sensitive place in the Help file.

> Obviously Kim himself considers this to be very
> important. Why else on most
> screens he indicates "F1 help", even if
> it is still grey?

I know he realizes this is important. Finding time to do all this is probably his biggest problem.

> The rename operation is really an every day's and
> every user's job. If this
> feature is as complex as it is since vers. 1.46y
> there must be a similar
> complex and context sensitive help option and - of
> course - the [F1] be shown.

I know Kim has been working on a very detailed User Guide which will explain these features. However, in my opinion, (and I haven't expressed this before), it would be better to first get much of that detail into the online Help file, so the user can just hit F1 and get all the help he needs.

This file could be developed and enhanced feature by feature, rather than having to wait until the entire User Guide is complete to make it available, and it would be easier to keep up to date and distribute. There are of course, some limitations of the Help file as compared to the User Guide, as fonts and bolding are not easily reproduced. The advantage, however, of having the information at one's fingertips outweighs those limitations, IMHO. And, of course, one could always print it for that relaxed bedtime reading. ;-)

> You are right, John. Limited space was a problem
> for XTree and the situation
> is getting much worse with ZTree.
> Therefore we have to go new ways, even if we have
> to leave the old XTree tracks.

Absolutely agree again!

> I remember that in good old DOS days lot of other
> progs had similar problems,
> e.g. LapLink. Their programers found a solution
> which today is still used
> by Novell in some of their console (non GUI)
> program screens.
> What is about adding (where it is necessary) a new
> hot key called "F11 Toggle"
> or "F12 More" ???
> Pressing F11 or F12 would then shift 1, 2 or all 3
> lines (depending on the
> context) from right to left. The most left hot key
> indicators would disappear
> and some extra (hidden) indicators would appear.
> In this special occasion (where I'm missing the
> crtl-tab hotkey) the new
> "toggle switch" would have to shift only
> about 2/3 text of the last line to
> show other (hidden) hot keys.

This is a good idea and strategy, and we could develop a standard approach to this throughout ZTree. Let me think about this a little more.

> I'm not a programer, but I think that Kim uses
> already a similar code on
> other functions. So I hope that such alterations
> can be implemented without
> wasting weeks of Kim's valueable time.
>
> What do you and other hard core users think ?
>
> \Charles

Well that's THIS hard-core user's opinion!

See also my response to Greg on his suggestions.

- John

879 views      
Thread locked
 

Messages in this Thread

 
96,637 Postings in 12,231 Threads, 350 registered users, 66 users online (1 registered, 65 guests)
Index | Admin contact |   Forum Time: Mar 29, 2024 - 1:59 am UTC  |  Hits:62,388,034  (2,820 Today )
RSS Feed