Add context sensitive help

[alistair-marshall]

Rather than just relying on a separate help/FAQ page, show help text within the main application.

[jcoliz]

Do you have a POV on how you'd want this to look?

Simplest may be to use a tooltip below the item when hovering on an input field.

and/or could have an '?' icon in the upper-right on each header and subheader which linked to an anchor in the FAQ.

[alistair-marshall]

Idealy it would allow removal (or less reliance) on the FAQ and provide the information where the user needs it. I had thought of a tooltip or a questionmark that pops up an explanation.

I don't have any strong views about what way I would like other than to follow 'best practice' whatever that is (including keeping things accessable for all users).

[jcoliz]

Challenges with outright removing the FAQ...

1. "What is cFIREsim?" This is helpful context, so it would be a shame if it disappeared. Could solve this by having a section above timeframe/data options, and include a "collapse" icon on that. Then save a cookie that the user collapsed it, and on further visits load this section as collapsed with an "expand" icon
2. FAQ has a helpful "get started quickly" section at the top, currently entitled "Basic Tutorial". This could be solved in the same way as item 1. Perhaps the introductory section includes both "what is this?" and "how do I get started quickly?". Once you've collapsed that section, you never need to see it again.
3. Explanation of withdrawal strategies is >900 words. That won't fit in a tooltip. Could solve this by having ONLY a "withdrawal strategies" page with a '?' icon link from the home page.
4. Re-balancing strategy is 190 words. Same concern as item 3, just to a lesser degree.

Tool tips would handle the rest, IMO.

[jcoliz]

OK, I've been working on this. This is my three-pronged approach:

• (?) buttons to bring up long text for complex inputs. This is PR #52. It loads text on-demand to avoid loading all the text on first load.
• Standard bootstrap tool-tips for the easier inputs. This is ready to PR.
• Collapsible getting-started pane. Started working on this at https://github.com/jcoliz/cFIREsim-open/tree/pull-gettingstarted-28

With all of these, I think the FAQ could be removed. Further step would be to add additional tips or help topics for things that weren't in the original FAQ.

[alistair-marshall]

Sounds great.

My development laptop is currently dead so development/testing is difficult but I will try to test and merge as quickly as I can.

Thanks again.

On Wed, 3 Jun 2020, 21:38 James Coliz, [email protected] wrote:

OK, I've been working on this. This is my three-pronged approach:

• (?) buttons to bring up long text for complex inputs. This is PR #52 https://github.com/alistair-marshall/cFIREsim-open/pull/52. It loads text on-demand to avoid loading all the text on first load.
• Standard bootstrap tool-tips for the easier inputs. This is ready to PR.
• Collapsible getting-started pane. Started working on this at https://github.com/jcoliz/cFIREsim-open/tree/pull-gettingstarted-28

With all of these, I think the FAQ could be removed. Further step would be to add additional tips or help topics for things that weren't in the original FAQ.

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[jcoliz]

Great, no hurry. Just wanted to make sure you were ok with the approach.

[jcoliz]

Ok, this is all totally done and ready. You can view it all integrated together in https://github.com/jcoliz/cFIREsim-open/tree/develop . I currently have it divided into 4 sub-topics, so I was going to submit them one at a time, unless you want it all together at once.