A "Welcome" App for Haiku

Feedback Ideas
1

It would be good if Haiku had a “Welcome” app to give users quick links and info to resources. @lelldorin has made a “First Steps in Haiku” app which we can modify and improve and then submit for consideration for inclusion in Haiku.

For reference, here’s what the app currently looks like:
image

The first steps (pun not intended) we can take to improve this are to replace the “HAIKU” wordmark with the official Haiku logo. We can also change the font used for the text in the buttons to Noto Sans to match what is used system-wide by default. The background looks a bit plain, so maybe we could change it to one of the wallpapers submitted at Call for Wallpapers | Haiku Project - preferably one without the Haiku logo.

Anyone else have any ideas?

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2

How’s that better than the existing Welcome page and Quick Tour?

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3

I probably should have checked what the Welcome page currently has before posting this haha.

The Welcome page does link to some resources, but this app does it in a simpler and arguably more organised way.

I guess another alternative would be to improve the Welcome page and simplify it?

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It would be nice if the Quick Tour application started automatically at first boot (with selected language locale).

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5

BeTips could also be an idea to dig in if only there were more tips translations…

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I also wonder, why Tipster is not included in a default install. New users would definitely appreciate learning about the system. Otherwise, I don’t think anyone would deliberately search and install for a tips application. People are mostly neutral, unless you don’t shove them the information, they are not going to search for it.

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7

Hello,

I think the lelldorin welcome app is good.
I would like it if he could incorporate the changes and also take care of maintenance for the app. I think he only needs help with entering haiku.

Regards lorglas

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8

I think its maybe better to auto open quick-toor in current selected language instead of a new app.

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9

Dear Humdinger
My first Haiku install performed recently concluded in error to wifi connection that would need to reach internet connection as my mobile router requires wifi connection. The wired net ends in a router but it should connect to mobilerouter via wifi connection. Within the router the internet connection fails I should confugure that as well. The router conncts my mobile router, against it not use that to reach internet but would use wired lan. Possible problem is lan and wwan use diffrent ipv4 network however I added network mask this way but it seems I was not enogh experienced. Once I changed to gateway from router then it worked, but something happened and since then it always tries to get the net via wan port but nothing is connected there.
So this 32 bit version Haiku would work better with an OFFLINE program - at least the offline part would be available for us where something blocks the internet connection. Offline option for example if besly analysis tool would be well integrated that could be used. As there is not possible to install this analysis tool successfully as without net I have to download also and install this yab stuff and possibly other requirementes as well as well as I got that message when I downloaded the package via Windows and put it into an ntfs thumb drive and attempted to install that one hpkg.
It would be useful a BeFS.IFS as I cannot copy to drive (SD card) directly as windows wants to always format the disk. I forgot to leave a fat32 formatted partition there. Now I have no linux machine actually to solve there.
So anyway
an offline welcome program
would be very useful.
For example.- it would have a collect logs part. That collect all logs required for developers and put into a zip or other rightful archive format. to attach to bug ticket.
If HAiku Inc. would create Haiku usb install key - they should create a plus debug version that saves console logs into a reserved partition on boot device automatically and if there is no serial in the machine that log with timestamp can be copied into the ticket for developers. I have no smart phone so I cannot create high dpi pictures about the screen :S
So I assume an offline prog would be more option and useful than an online welcome stuff.
I do not intend to make a note what are missing I just want to defend such program option in case we would unattached to net option, serial option.
Anyway I felt myself lucky as reached desktop on Dell Inspiron 9100 fully :smiley:
On a Dell Precision 6700M I had wifi, that connected, but after i got immediately “leválasztva” means detached It is also the Haiku hrev55733 32bit.
Still not wrote ticket as I traveled to my parents and I had another “jobs” until now.
With 64 bit nightly I got all the icons grey. Possibly I would set to uefi from legacy CSM to resolve this.

EDIT : fixed typos and supplemental text added.

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The Welcome page, User Guide and Quick Tour are all offline available in Haiku releases.

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11

From the looks of it, this Welcome app is a collection of 11 links to (online) ressources. Instead of a bit more text to properly welcome the new user, the text-reading is postponed to the page of the linked ressource.
The Haiku Welcome page OTOH has all those ressources and more nicely layed out on one page. The most important links to the User Guide and the Quick Tour with nice big icons at the top, together with a little index to quickly jump in-page to the few topics.

The Welcome page is the default page of WebPositive. I’m sorry, but if people can’t be bothered with the current Welcome page, a special app that links more or less to the same pages won’t cut it either. People will read the first half of the 12 buttons, click one and close the opening page when they see 2 paragraphs of text… :slight_smile:
Or they do read the opening page and can do the same with the single Welcome page.

3 Likes
12

[German]
Mein example Programm ist entstanden nachdem ich immer wieder festgestellt habe das viele, haiku fremde leute, anfangs probleme haben die haiku spezifischen dinge zu verstehen. viele suchen, weil sie es nicht anders kennen, nach dem, was sie gewohnt sind. Die haiku guides und die Tour sind in offiziellen Veröffentlichungen enthalten, in den meist verwendeten nightlys aber nicht (online: oder hat sich das geändert?). angelehnt an die linux willkommen Programme ist diese App entstanden. Kurz und knapp das wichtigste ohne viel lesen müssen. Das forum, Projek-seite, Fehlermeldungen, … und auch nicht ganz uneigennützig den link zu unserer wissensbasis ;).

Die Tour die ich eingebaut habe ist interaktiv, heisst der Nutzer muss selber Aktionen ausführen. Der Lerneffekt für neue, nicht sehr erfahrene Interessierte, ist das sehr lehrreich. Wir dürfen nicht die Leute vergessen die weniger Erfahrungen haben.

Es ist halt nur ein Beispiel, bestimmt nicht die beste Umsetzung aber es reicht zu zeigen was gemeint ist.

[English by google translate]
My example program was created after I found out again and again that many people, strangers to haiku, initially had problems understanding haiku-specific things. because they don’t know any other way, many look for what they are used to. The haiku guides and the tour are included in official publications, but not in the most popular nightlys (online: or has that changed?). This app was created based on the linux welcome programs. In a nutshell, the most important things without having to read a lot. The forum, project page, error messages, … and also, not entirely unselfishly, the link to our knowledge base;).

The tour that I have built in is interactive, which means that the user has to carry out actions himself. The learning effect for new, not very experienced interested parties is very instructive. We must not forget the people who have less experience.

It’s just an example, definitely not the best implementation, but it is enough to show what is meant.

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I think the problem is that Quick Tour is just one of many icons on the Desktop, in an era when it’s very common to not have any icons there.

It’s also not obvious that opening Web+ is the first thing you should do (starting page). And actually how do you do that if you don’t know what Deskbar is?

My idea to solve this would be to have a prompt (“Do you want to take a Quick Tour?”), similar to the Daylight Savings Time change one, that would start only once after installation. (I believe Installer detects if it should run by checking if a certain config file exists - I suppose similar condition could be used for such a prompt.) I know adding more prompts rarely solves things, but if the user can’t be bothered to read one sentence and just clicks through, then what else can we do?

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14

The nightly don’t include the userguide package because they are meant for testing and development. New users of Haiku should not be running the nightly builds.

If this is not the case, we should fix that first. Probably we need to make the nightly builds more “scary” with warnings and disclaimers. And also, make new official releases a bit more frequently.

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15

Well I installed nightly as more of you offered to install those for other people as more things fixed in that. I also downloaded beta3 but first I created boot/install material from latest nightly 32 and 64bit to check out them.
I created first ticket from my experince without turned to forum firstly as many other one did as I saw previously.
It might be as I am experienced user on some Linux/UNIX and were midrange administrator in the past for 15 years.
I was honest and wrote some stuff that I experienced meanwhile but I still had not created ticket about yet especially as I had not changed bios to uefi to test my first thought as 64 bit Haiku maybe preferred that than Legacy + CSM.

As @tqh wrote these computers were DELL machines and with 32bit Haiku I could reach desktop on both without change or blacklist anything. I was just blocked to use wifi.and this way reach internet.
Somehow on Dell Inspiron 9100 the Intel 1350 was detected as Broadcom as well as 100 BaseT etehrnet port. As since then I checked that machine on Windows, so I know that.
On DELL Precision 6700M - that I had not created ticket yet, this desktop also reached with 32bit Haiku as well, the Intel wifi was configured for me, but somehow detached. I added key, shifted to Connected, and immediately detached.
64bit Haiku I wrote above.
I would open these problems as 64bit re-tested with BIOS change to UEFI.

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Well, it’s not that crowded. :slight_smile:
Currently it’s only the Boot drive and Trash, plus QuickTour, Userguide and BeBook. The BeBook will probably go when we finally reach R1.

I agree. I would even go one step further: Since it’s really only on first boot, why not just fire up Web+ automatically with one tab the Welcome page and the second, active tab the QuickTour.
Since the browser is the most important tool to find information to help a newbie, they get introduced to it right away.

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17

I’d just make the icons bigger by default

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18

No, that is obtrusive. Automatically opening an application that a minority of the users might find useful but that will annoy the rest is a horrible idea.

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No, it’s definitely not obtrusive. It would be obtrusive if it started at every boot. It’s perfectly normal to display a welcome screen at the first boot after installation.

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20

Starting the welcome guide on first boot makes no sense, if the user does not understand how it can be opened (because they did not do this themselves) They will not ever use this as a ressource, they will probably accidentally close it and then never find it again, because it was not them that opened it but the OS.

Just make the icons bigger, if people still don’t see it they definetely won’t see the welcome guide shoved in their face either. I also thinks this sets a bad precedent for new users because the OS did something they did not ask it to do.