Adding Popup Help
As part of my Google Summer of Code project, I'm working on adding pop ups that help users with new features. For example, when a user single clicks an element in the palette, a pop up would appear saying "Double click to add an element to the score, but make sure something is selected in the score first!" I go into more detail in my latest blog post: Beginner Mode and Tutorial Creation: Week 6.
My question is this:
What kind of popup help would you have found useful the first time you tried to do something?
Comments
I would add that "first you tried to do something" can incude really general things like, "first time I started MuseScore", or "first time I tried entering a note". So that the idea of a "startup tour" or "getting started" score is potentially all part of the same thing.
Certain actions might benefit from a little extra "smarts", although it isn't crucial. For example, slurs and ties are constantly being confused. If someone adds a slur between two notes of the same pitch, chances are great they meant a tie. So it would be nice to capture this case specifically. Still, even a general "looks like you're adding a slur, here's some more info on that - and by the way, if you really meant a tie, then ..." could be nice.
Similarly, if there were some way to detect that someone is attempting to do multiple voices and we could pup up some just in time help on that, how awesome would that be? So it might be interesting to learn what sort of things people have tried when first attempting multiple voices. Possibilities that occur to me include trying to enter a rest where there is already a note, or trying to enter a note of a different duration than the one that is there, or entering a chord then selecting one note and trying to change the duration.