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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    A Windows 2000 experience with the Help System
From:       Irwin <emerald-arcana () rogers ! com>
Date:       2002-06-15 4:12:06
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Here's a short story about my recent use of Windows 2000.

I decided to sort everything on the WIndows 2000 computer at my house 
according to a pseudo-task oriented menu: I placed the commonly used programs 
at the top of the Start Menu with names like, "Browse the Internet" instead 
of "Mozilla Web Browser" and "Burn CD" instead of "Nero Burning ROM".

I also placed these icons on the desktop.

Now, it came to a point when I wanted to shut off the Windows 2000 hidden 
menus.  So first, I went to the Control Panel and after clicking around in 
"Display" for a while, I found some stuff about "Menu Effects" and so forth. 
Bingo!

Wait, I was wrong.  So I clicked around a bit more under "System" and "Users" 
so I couldn't find it.

So I hit the "F1" key for help at the desktop.  After searching the help for a 
while, there was nothing there since Menus turned up very little.

I went around playing with the Start Menu a bit more and I hit F1 at the start 
menu.  NOW I get the correct Windows 2000 help: the help from the desktop was 
probably the Windows 98 help (since I did an OS upgrade).

After being misled by its welcome screen ... there was a search item image on 
the page, and it said, "Click on the Search Tab" to search, but it wasn't 
there.  I went to the image and tried to type, but then the tooltip popped up 
and it said, "This is only an example".  I felt sort of stupid.  I looked for 
a while and in the top menus, there was a thing called "Turn on Tabs".  So I 
did that.

Then, I went to search the help menus and typed "Menus".  At first I didn't 
see anything, but then I saw something called Hidden Menus.  So I clicked on 
that.  What do I get?  A list of about 20 items, all links, with a heading of 
something like, "Windows 2000 Settings" or something like that.  THAT really 
pissed me off royally: all that work and what I get as a reward isn't even a 
direct link to the damn correct pages!  I had to scroll through the entire 
menu and clicked on most of the items individually.  One of them (it wasn't 
even about Hidden Menu Items) advised that I click on the Taskbar, so I did 
that.

I went to the taskbar and attempted to customize everything.  There were a 
bunch of "Advanced" settings for "Scrollable Program Menus" and "Expanded 
Control Center" menus and so forth, but none of them were about the "Hidden 
Menus".

I finally found it under the "General" tab, under the name, "Personalized Menu 
Entries".

I think it took me about 45 minutes to actually do all of that, and I no 
longer remember what I originally came to the computer to do.  I jumped over 
here to tell you my story.

Anyway... that's my experience as a user.  I certainly felt like a first time 
user.

My very short web page about this matter:

http://yetta.net/~arcana/kde/windows-help/
- -- 
- -- Irwin 
(Arcana)

P.S.  Make KMenu icons BIG, please!
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