Issue 11683

integrate documentation links for maps and nub taxa

11683
Reporter: mdoering
Type: Improvement
Summary: integrate documentation links for maps and nub taxa
Priority: Major
Resolution: Fixed
Status: Closed
Created: 2012-08-17 18:18:50.845
Updated: 2013-09-26 22:46:50.91
Resolved: 2013-09-26 22:46:50.875
        
Description: Non intrusive links for users to understand what the maps and taxa actually represent and how we process things.
http://data.gbif.org/tutorial/tutorial
http://data.gbif.org/tutorial/maps
how to integrate such help texts so that its not annoying, but people can find them]]>
    

Attachment gbif_help_links.png



Author: dcano
Created: 2012-11-13 17:12:23.41
Updated: 2012-11-13 17:12:23.41
        
Are you sure we need these tutorials? If the site is properly designed and built they should not be necessary. Or at least they should be written to be less verbose.

About where to link them and how to structure them: we should close the content we want to keep before doing it. Current ones are not valid anymore.
    


Author: mdoering@gbif.org
Comment: the above descriptions definitely need to be completely rewritten and shorter, yes. The question was primarily if it wouldn't be best to have a quick help link especially for maps to explain what they actually visualize. It is not always clear to people I think. One way of course would be just to have that text available in an about/help section which we should do anyway. Maybe that is good enough and we dont need to provide insitu links next to each map
Created: 2012-11-13 17:22:08.016
Updated: 2012-11-13 17:22:08.016


Author: dcano
Created: 2012-11-13 17:31:38.728
Updated: 2012-11-13 17:31:38.728
        
No, I'm not saying we should drop all "What does this mean?" links. They may be helpful at certain points. But we should define what information we need to clarify before designing it :-)

For example: if we decide all help we have to show for maps is a sentence, we can do it with a tooltip. On the other hand, if we need to explain a complex procedure of how data is incorporated to GBIF, we need to add a link to the "About" section.
    


Author: dcano
Comment: Hey Markus, we need a decision here. What should I do with it?
Created: 2012-11-15 12:09:21.368
Updated: 2012-11-15 12:09:21.368


Author: mdoering@gbif.org
Comment: Lets just consider how to link an explanatory page for the maps. There will be different kind of species maps at some stage and we need a way to explain what they actually represent
Created: 2012-11-15 12:11:32.233
Updated: 2012-11-15 12:11:32.233


Author: dcano
Created: 2012-11-19 18:40:51.727
Updated: 2012-11-19 18:40:51.727
        
Here I attach two different ways of using help links.

The one on the left will be used for contextual help, when a sentence is enough for most users. The tooltip will be shown on hovering (with a 0.2 sec wait before doing it, to prevent unintended showings). If the tooltip is not enough information, the user can click "Learn more" and go to the help page.

The one on the right is a regular link to the corresponding Help page, with an indicator that makes clear it is a help page.