#21 New user walk-through

[Roger Sperberg]

Because of the difficulty I had -- about 45 minutes
before I discovered the right dialog box, including
crash time recovery and over two sessions, about 15
minutes and 30 minutes in length -- I suggest a new
section in the help file:

** First time user **

It would advise the user to
-first create a this
-save it
-then create a that
-save it
-choose this menu command
-in that dialog click on this button
-in this dialog enter such and such information, click
on this button

And so on.

At any rate, after trial and error, I created a new
deck. Selected untitled1 and then saved it. Created a
new cardfile (no sign of that). Saved it.

Wait, that didn't work for me.

I had to double click on Untitled1 to get to the Deck
View dialog and find a button that let me add a card.

(Trying to remember why I couldn't get to this dialog
when I already had a saved deck and cardfile -- but I
couldn't. I'll try again and if the deck isn't there,
I'll file a bug report.)

Then explain the card boxes.

The page -- To Find and Collect new words -- the page
with the example of copying a definition from a
dictionary is similar to what I have in mind.

That is, it is task oriented, and not Menu command
oriented.

I passed by the Create a New Deck page the first two
times I went through the online manual. I thought it
ended after the first screen capture, no, after the
second screen capture.

Perhaps if the material farther down had been on a
separate page I would have realized sooner what I
needed to do.

Instead, btw, what I kept wanting to do was click on
EDIT CARD, which of course will only work on a card you
have already created.

At that point, I didn't realize that the way to ADD a
new CARD was to go to the DECK player and click on
VIEW/EDIT a DECK.

IN the first-time user section, I would make sure I
differentiated between

• Starting from scratch and creating your first new
  card and where to put it (eg decks, cardfiles and card
  boxes)
• Importing files from existing material (you can point
  to the other pages already created if you think they
  explain this sufficiently -- since I don't have any
  files, I didn't look closely at them)
• Using the program in the way intended to review
  vocabulary

Thanks,

Roger Sperberg
rsperberg@gmail.com

[Vladislav Grinchenko]

Logged In: YES
user_id=616697

I'll keep your comments open and around to be revisited when
I have more time.

You have made a valid observation that the manual doesn't
stress out (in bold I guess) steps 1 ... 10 to walk the
novice user through the process of creating the very first
Deck.

The flash demos, however, make that procedure pretty
clear-cut: Lesson 1 "Illustrates how to create, fill, and
save a Deck of flashcards" comes to mind.

Thanks for the comments. I'll try to improve the manual in
the future.