Greetings,

I'm curious to know what you, as a user and as a developer think of Tip of the Day dialogs. Are they good for new users and a total waste of time for experienced users?

Take Care, Zack Jones

-- Anonymous, December 22, 2000

Answers

I see them as a complete waste of programmer time. That because information is usefull only in the right context. New users care more about using the program than about tricks and experienced users usually like learning while doing.

A good thing though is to have tips and tricks section in the help menu, people *Like* learning new tricks when they are not shoved in their face when they are least interested (when they start the program and eager to start working). Besides most people prefer browsing in a list of tips rather then seeing one random at a time.

-- Anonymous, December 27, 2000

I mostly switch them off, but I've found the ones for the GIMP are actually pretty interesting.

My main problem with tip of the day stuff is that it's actually too basic and aimed at simple functionality. The reason I like the GIMP's tips is they occasionally realte to more advanced features only someone quite familiar with the program would know about.

Tips of the day along the lines of "to open a file, press foo" are IMO a waste of time.

-- Anonymous, January 05, 2001

I always turn them off. usually when I start up some software I am in a hurry to get something done and an annoying dialog box telling me, "Press the key to hide and or view all the floating palettes," is just going to slow me down. Usually the tips are someithing like, "press to ". If I want to figure out a shortcut to I'll look it up in the documentation, thank you.

-- Anonymous, January 08, 2001