[android-developers] Re: Designing Help into Your App

On Thursday, August 22, 2013 2:08:38 PM UTC-7, Nobu Games wrote:

Personally I always go for option 2, a full screen webview in an extra activity for displaying help for the current page. I store localized HTML files in the assets directory. It's just a matter of adding some language code to the file names and loading the correct page for the current locale while falling back to English. It works so far for me.

 
That does sound about right. I have a need to make help available offline, which probably means it will be less detailed, less pictorial, and possibly less fresh. 

My current online help has a tutorial feel, with screenshots and text. I have an idea that people who view the help on their computer with their phone nearby benefit the most from this format. Those who view the help on their phone and can't see the app at the same time - not so much.

 

I also agree with what TreKing: it's not a top priority for most developers. But in my humble opinion they probably shouldn't write the end user documentation of their own apps in the first place. First of all because of some kind of blindness when it comes to possible real help questions. They know their babies inside out. Second of all documentation written by programmers tends to sound way too technical. I guess it's better to let somebody who isn't that technical but good at writing do that job. And that person should try to figure out the app with a fresh pair of eyes.

I'm inclined to agree and yet haven't succeeded yet. I've done pretty much that and I just might not have the right person doing it.
It doesn't take much to convince me that I am no good at writing help, but I don't think I've found someone else who is good at it yet.
 

Ultimately I don't think that users really care that much about detailed context-sensitive help texts because of "tl;dr". Most users require the app to be self-explaining. At best there should be some easy to understand tutorial overlays that explain UI elements with arrows and short texts.

I'd be okay with that. That goes beyond a fullscreen webview, though, and that's why I thought of the PopupWindow.showAsDropDown.

Nathan

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Android Developers" group.
To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
android-developers+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to android-developers+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.