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Hi,
I have been thinking about that one quite some time now.
New users often get confused over what program does what job and when they finally have found a way to e.g. open Kopete for MSN chatting, they are confused on how to create accounts properly.
In such situation, some dialog boxes which introduce the user to the application would be quite usefull. It should be possible for an application to just call one function to pop up a box, so the code is kept simple but still the devs can add dialogs for many everyday-scenarios. If we take the example Kopete once again, the first box would say something like "welcome to Kopete. As this is the first time you start the application, you'll probably want to create a new account" (perhaps there should also be a way to mark the things the user has to click then). After the account has been created, the user can be told where what functionality is and a quick-guide for often used chat functions.
Perhaps that's even a little overkill in that example, but if we take more complex applications like KDevelop, installation and configuration could be speed up quite a bit I think.

On top of that, the API behavior for such boxes should also be configurable enough, so that 1) it is possible for applications to pop up boxes only on first start and 2) it is possible for the user to disable all boxes via systemsettings.

This API could be great! Imagine global settings about what skill level we are. We can set we are beginner in computer, advanced user, etc. Additionally we may disable this functionality globally(not per application) or set hobby, like movie editing, so we always get personalized help dialogs.

Sorry, I'm really put off by the idea. My experience with a first use of Windows Vista put me off: pop-up after pop-up after pop-up... Things that were supposed to be, "user-friendly" but ended up being really annoying to myself and several other people I know.

Even if you could disable it, you'd have to go to system settings: pop-up. "Welcome to System Settings. Here, you can change the settings of-" bla bla bla, go away. Go to Notifications to switch them off - pop-up. "Welcome to the notifications area. Please-" GO AWAY.

Madman wrote:Sorry, I'm really put off by the idea. My experience with a first use of Windows Vista put me off: pop-up after pop-up after pop-up... Things that were supposed to be, "user-friendly" but ended up being really annoying to myself and several other people I know.

Even if you could disable it, you'd have to go to system settings: pop-up. "Welcome to System Settings. Here, you can change the settings of-" bla bla bla, go away. Go to Notifications to switch them off - pop-up. "Welcome to the notifications area. Please-" GO AWAY.

So this behavior should be configurable. You can set your skill level, disable all popups with helps, remove popup from blacklist, remove application from blacklist, set your hobby, etc.

Application can read this information and show more personized information.

We can also configure period of displaying tips of day for new applications.