Bugzilla – Bug 2487
Better approach to Settings help
Last modified: 2011-11-06 23:23:43 UTC
The current approach to server and player settings pages is overly verbose, making the pages difficult to navigate and often difficult to find a simple setting, and yet insufficiently instructive in the use of many of the settings, and their implications. Place a 'Help' link next to most settings (a '?' icon works well). When clicked, open a small window with with detailed help for each of the settings. There's almost no limit to the amount of help text that can then be displayed, without further cluttering up the setting pages themselves. You can even link to related help topics, something you can't do in the present setup. Get rid of most, or all of the current explanation text in the settings pages. I'd also like to see you get rid of all the different 'Change' buttons on a page, which only confuse matters and make the addition of other (perhaps scripted) buttons on the page either difficult or impossible. The settings pages will also become smaller, making additional prefs easier to add and for users to manage.
patches welcome
Good ideas here Jim - the whole settings situation has been a pet-peeve of mine for a while. Unfortunately it's going to take a bit of thought and reworking.
Settings work is going to happen post 6.5
see also bug 4492
Implemented in SC7
No offense, but what has been done is a half solution. All that's been accomplished (and, as far as I can, in only the Default skin) is that the longer descriptions have been hidden. That's fine, and it does help clean up the settings pages, making locating a setting on the page easier, but there's still no "Help". At least provide links from the settings to an HTML Help document. The long descriptions are long way from real documentation.
*** Bug 4492 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Unassigned bugs cannot have a priority.