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During the PHP usability study, a couple participants found the Start Page quite useless and irrelevant for PHP users. The problems revealed during the study include: 1. "Quick Start Tutorial" links to a tutorial for Java apps, which is irrelevant to PHP users 2. The "Learn More About" section does not say anything about PHP, it should contain a link to the PHP learning trail: http://www.netbeans.org/kb/trails/php.html 3. Users expected that they will be able to create a new project or import their sources through the welcome screen 4. The "News and Tutorials" section contains a lot of information that is irrelevant to PHP users - users expect they will only see the relevant information 5. Dtto for the "Blogs" section 6. Users did not discover that the Start Page has two tabs For more details see: http://wiki.netbeans.org/PhpUsabilityStudyNotes
see also http://www.netbeans.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=138961
Stando, thanks for the very fast fix!
1. "Quick Start Tutorial" links to a tutorial for Java apps, which is irrelevant to PHP users Fixed, though only if the IDE was installed via installer. And only if the user installed PHP distro. Not working if the user installed PHP support later, or if the user started with Full distro. Petr, is it what you want? 2. The "Learn More About" section does not say anything about PHP, it should contain a link to the PHP learning trail: http://www.netbeans.org/kb/trails/php.html Patrick, please, let us know how you want us to include it there. 3. Users expected that they will be able to create a new project or import their sources through the welcome screen I am not sure this is a good idea. There is no good place in Start Page currently which we could use for this purpose. The Start Page would have to be redesigned completely... Moreover these actions can be easily found on prominent places of the UI (obvious main menu items and toolbar items). I suggest to not do anything about that. 4. The "News and Tutorials" section contains a lot of information that is irrelevant to PHP users - users expect they will only see the relevant information Current layout and content of the Start Page is primarily designed to suite well the Full IDE distribution. All other distros are considered to be a subset of Full IDE distro, thus Start Page promotes all technology areas that Full IDE supports. Petr, if you want to change that, let me and Docs know. We will have to rethink the content thoroughly together. 5. Dtto for the "Blogs" section The same as with 4 above. 6. Users did not discover that the Start Page has two tabs The second tab of the Start Page is automatically shown at second and next starts of NetBeans. Anything else you think we could do about that?
RE 2., yes, there should be a link added for the PHP learning trail
Re: 4 and 5 - we want to stress that NetBeans is a "big tent" where all technologies can find a home. So I'd rather not try to divide the RSS feeds by technology. Would mean introducing more complexity to the Welcome Screen (would have to be configurable) and we'd have to do a lot of work on our side to make the RSS feeds work (although I would like to have technology-specific RSS feeds, but unfortunately this isn't trivial with our current web infrastructure).
I agree. Please consider all these items to be just "observations" that we should evaluate, and we may or may not address them. I also agree with Tonda regarding items 3 and 6, so now I consider items 3,4,5,6 resolved. So the two remaining subitems are 1 and 2.
web team, please create the 'learn more about php' link on the server and then reassign back to me to add it to the start page, thanks.
Well, the PHP learning trail already exists: http://www.netbeans.org/kb/trails/php.html It is linked from the main Docs & Support page. Is this what you meant?
there already is 'learn more' link for php in start page, see #142279 so i guess john can close this issue as fixed
Closing as it seems all welcome screen issues have been fixed. Thanks everyone.