InfoQube IM - Community

Submitted by KeithB on 2010/02/03 18:58

There's an interesting thread on the outlinersoftware forum about InfoQube from someone trying to learn it. It has some good food for thought for any of us pondering how to get people to "get it" more quickly.

http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/1471/0/infoqube

I've noticed there are several people on here adept at videos; that might be an area to think about, to possibly create more of, for people who don't "get it" easily with the written manual.

Comments

Thanks for the link Keith. Yes, videos are great. I wonder though if we should do that now... This means a lot of time. Right now I'm concentrating on debugging IQ, which is already very time consuming (finding the exact steps to recreate a problem is not always easy). But if everybody sees videos as more important than debugging, I might devote some of my time to create a few. But then... hmmm... Not sure.

I think I have thrown out this idea already (partially anyway)

I know when I get a new piece of software I tend to go through the menus and try & figure things out as I go along. It's great to have the menu pages for reference to help us figure things out.

But, as we all know, IQ is too complex to figure out from the menus.

What would you think of a manual with just a few top-level-items, (each expandable) e.g.

~ First (Quick Start) - taking the concept from the Beginners Tutorial file - i.e. Simple, clear explanation of the basics (the basics do have to include some fairly complex things though - not sure should filtering be even included here until made more user friendly or a user friendly alternative is included)

~ Second (In Depth) - an in depth explanations of how things work

~ Third (Menu) - detailed description of menus.

One thing the menu page sorely misses is the ability to collapse & expand the outline. Even as a long time user I find it daunting - the only advantage of it being expanded is that I can search the page with browser search.

Ideally the first time visitor would see (maybe) just those three headings above or something as simple, with a search box that just searches the manual.

Possible Cons: There would probably have to be a lot of repetition - the basic stuff may have to be repeated/summarised in the Second section with naturally some overlap with the menus section. There would have to be lots of links made (anchors created etc.)

Pros: manual would be clearly structured and hopefully progress naturally from simple to complex (although that could be a challenge too!)

I notice when I click on the IQ User manual in the list on the left there I get the fully expanded list
But,

if I click on the Other Documentation link & then click on IQ User manual I get a collapsed version of same ( InfoQube Documentation: Main Page )
[quote]
    * 0. IQ User Manual in an IQBase
    * 1. Introduction
    * 2. Getting Started
    * 3. InfoQube User Interface
    * 4. InfoQube Data (Fields)
    * 5. Searching, Filtering & Sorting
    * 6. Importing
    * 7. Exporting and printing
    * 8. Linking
    * 9. Synchronizations
    * 10. Tips & Tricks
    * 11. Program Settings and options
    * 12. Mouse and keyboard usage in IQ
    * 13. Supported Operating Systems
    * 14. Sample IQBases (i.e. IQ templates)
    * 15. Glossary
    * 16. How to ?
    * 17. Troubleshooting
    * Other community contributions to the User Manual
    * Obsolete manual pages[/quote]

Yes, showing the tree-view by default was a good plan initially, but it has grown a bit large. I've changed it to show a summary TOC (with a link to the tree-view).

Let's see if it's better this way

Yes, it's better like that IMO (with the option to have the full tree, etc.).

I think it's a good plan. The important thing to keep in mind in the quick start is that it needs to be in a "tutorial mode" with just enough theory to understand what's going on (most important : why are items displayed in grids, how to have these other items appear in that grid, etc.)

The "in depth" part could be theoretical, with examples only.

In any case, it's very important to avoid repetitions... and use linking instead. Otherwise, we run the risk of having huge "information syncing problem" and inaccurate duplications.

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I also found the looonnng manual outline quite overwhelming, but, I now use it for the better : exactly like you, I use "browser search" (firefox' "search as you type"). I usually find stuff faster this way. However both have their place : a collapsible outline + a fully expended one.

Once documentation will be developped using IQ (as Pierre suggested a while ago, and as Keith demonstrated), these will be much easier.