AH-O₂ Plugin update

Hey lurkers and AH-O₂ peeps —

I made a couple minor changes to the pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party. One was merging a pull request from @ninnypants that fixed the tooltip issue (tooltip on the Help element on the Plugins page wasn’t displaying). Now that that’s fixed, we have something we can actually look at. Hovering over the Help will display the tooltip. It’s unstyled and ugly (CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. peeps, here’s your chance to contribute code), but it’s there and we can start to see what things might look like.

We talked yesterday about eliminating the icon entirely. (The reason there’s a big HELP there, by the way, is because there’s an <i> tag wrapped around the “Help” which is still contained within that <h2> which is what makes it so big.) @ninnypants said that would be pretty simple but the js would need to be tweaked a bit. (@brainfork if you want to look into that catch up with @ninnypants.)

Now for the people who’ve been watching this from the periphery —

If you grab a copy of what is in the repo right now, and go to the Plugins page, you’ll see what I’m talking about above. For the tooltips, wherever we want to put a tooltip, we need to define that space in the javascriptJavaScript JavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/. file. So this is why we want to go through all the admin pages, figure out what help we have and what elements on those pages might require (or benefit from) tooltips as well as what the existing help content gives us that could be adapted to tooltips. Previously, this was all sort of abstract, since there wasn’t anything you could actually see to demonstrate what we’re going after.

I think the help overview is probably easier to grasp since it is pretty similar to the overview in the existing help tabs and is also similar to the dashboard welcome screen, but when we’ve got that implemented in the plugin, I’ll post another update to illustrate what we’re going for there.

For those of you who haven’t (or don’t wanna) download the plugin, here’s a screenshot of what we got:
https://cloudup.com/cbF5RC7GaTF

#admin-help, #ah-o2

Siobhan 6:08 am on December 19, 2013

Thanks for this. I quite like the hover over tooltip (though it definitely needs styling to get a better idea of what it’s going to look like).

At the minute I can’t see the Help Overview so I’m not sure what the difference between the tooltips and the overview is.

Got a few questions:

1. How does the user discover that there are options in Users > Your Profile to enable and disable help?
2. Does the text just disappear when the mouse moves away? What about scenarios in which the user wants the content to remain visible while they complete their task?
3. What’s the rational for having both an overview and tooltips? What are the use-cases for each?
- Chris Reynolds 2:54 pm on December 19, 2013
  
  At the minute I can’t see the Help Overview so I’m not sure what the difference between the tooltips and the overview is.
  
  The overview hasn’t been built yet. We have mockups on the GithubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ page and in various P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. posts. This is the general idea for the overviews:
  https://github-camo.global.ssl.fastly.net/31f013e3afa0ffd3954f20b4978e62ce35e3c54e/687474703a2f2f7777772e6d61747476616e616e64656c2e636f6d2f77702d636f6e74656e742f75706c6f6164732f323031332f30392f77702d61646d696e2d68656c702d6f70656e2e6a7067
  
  1. How does the user discover that there are options in Users > Your Profile to enable and disable help?
  
  It will be in the overview. There will be a link to edit the help settings which goes to that section in the Your Profile page. Also, if the overviews are hidden, they can be expanded by clicking an icon to get the same content (so, again, they can go to their profile from there). It’s also in discussion whether to have a visible, persistent toggle that displays that tooltips are active (e.g. next to the Help link/icon which will be next to screen options at the top of the page).
  
  2. Does the text just disappear when the mouse moves away? What about scenarios in which the user wants the content to remain visible while they complete their task?
  
  Can you give an example of a scenario in which a user would want the help to be persistent? The two things we looked at for that was modals and tooltips — neither would provide a solution for what you are describing. Presumably if there was a need for that, it could go into the overview (e.g. on a separate tab?)
  
  3. What’s the rational for having both an overview and tooltips? What are the use-cases for each?
  
  Tooltips are specific descriptions of what each element does. Ideally, these would be present on everything, so as you navigate the admin, when you go to perform a specific function, a tooltip appears that tells you about what each thing does.
  
  The overviews are just that, an overview. These would ideally provide more generalized information about what the page is used for and what you can do here. (See the mockup for the Editing Posts overview for an example). These would be activated for new users by default but inactive for existing installs (people who have been using WordPress, in theory, wouldn’t need them as much as new users). Tooltips would always be active until deactivated.
  - Siobhan 6:57 am on December 24, 2013
    
    Can you give an example of a scenario in which a user would want the help to be persistent? The two things we looked at for that was modals and tooltips — neither would provide a solution for what you are describing. Presumably if there was a need for that, it could go into the overview (e.g. on a separate tab?)
    
    Sure. As an example: on the post edit screen, there could be content that walks someone through the steps needed to take to write the post. 1. Add your title, 2. write your content etc etc. The user would want this to be open as they complete this task.

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AH-O₂ Plugin update

Want to get involved?

Weekly meetings

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