2015-07-02, 17:58
After I posted I had the same thought about having a dialog box show up first, but honestly I think it could go both ways, and I like the idea of combining both windows. Otherwise it's "describe" then "choose" and you can never see both at the same time. I don't know of many programs except for us that would try to get away with that, and I don't think it's the better design. You're going back and forth between the setting/selection and the help text, like two pages in a book. That seems clunky to me.
Help text can also provide additional information that wouldn't be logical to present in the first dialog box. A perfect example of this is how we currently select video sources to add. A note about how you only see folders, and not files, would help avoid a lot of confusion for new users, and that is a message that would only make sense when selecting the source location.
Another variation of this idea would be making "Browse for folder" two lines and customizable for different situations, so it doesn't have to be a long description, but just a more descriptive title. Sometimes it will still just say "Browse for X", but it can now be longer and more specific, which goes a long way in helping make Kodi set up easier. We could easily make half of the wiki unnecessary with that alone ;)
Help text can also provide additional information that wouldn't be logical to present in the first dialog box. A perfect example of this is how we currently select video sources to add. A note about how you only see folders, and not files, would help avoid a lot of confusion for new users, and that is a message that would only make sense when selecting the source location.
Another variation of this idea would be making "Browse for folder" two lines and customizable for different situations, so it doesn't have to be a long description, but just a more descriptive title. Sometimes it will still just say "Browse for X", but it can now be longer and more specific, which goes a long way in helping make Kodi set up easier. We could easily make half of the wiki unnecessary with that alone ;)
