Based on a few posts here and at the mepis forums about a first run dialog, missing information on how to do basic functions, unknown new items, etc we are wondering if it is desired results have a startup dialog?

If you vote for a startup dialog could you please post what you would like to see for content in the dialog beyond / in more detail to than simply saying" information on what to do and what is new"?

Unsure of exactly what ATM, but maybe it would be good to look a new antiX users' questions, and try to answer the most common ahead of time.

On a LiveCD, you will get the first-run box on every boot.

Maybe a local"What's New" page for the browser home page would suffice. We could also have a desktop icon that takes you to that page whether it is the home page or not. If we have a decent, lightweight"What's New" HTML page, perhaps with embedded css, we can post it on Source forge and so forth. With a concerted effort I think we can solve the advertising part of the problem. Name the page Whats-New-antiX-$VERSION.html.

If there were a way to get a first-run box to only appear once then I would be all for it in addition to the other ways of advertising what's new. I'm not saying definitely no, but there is a risk of it appearing to be a nag screen.

BitJam wrote: If there were a way to get a first-run box to only appear once then I would be all for it in addition to the other ways of advertising what's new. I'm not saying definitely no, but there is a risk of it appearing to be a nag screen.

I think to most developers it would be __{{emoticon}}__ , I had one before but it was opted for removal. However there seems to be a few posts requesting to have one. So it is put to poll. I figure if the poll suggests to have one as a default, then we can look into possibilies on how to disable. If polls suggest it is not wanted, than no need to worry about it.

Live usb and"persistence locations" have the ability to make it show only once, so it would be a real"nag" only for live cd. At this point (though I have not explored it) i think the"annoying / nagging" captions can be disabled through a boot cheat, small remove-annoyance.xdelta, or similar.

Not sure. Maybe explain antixcc a little better?
Wicd also?

Being a long time user. I can live without it and the paint drying window. I get the paint drying window on everyboot or login on my 32bit RV install.
Not complaining really. Just mentioning it in case you did not know that was happening.

Dave, what layout style do you have in mind for the dialog container?

Here are links to some screenshots of various layouts in use by various distros.
I favor 2-pane (or otherwise tabbed, somehow) but unless we round up plenty of content / links, it would look sparse
(fluffing it with links to UserGuide subpages seem lame)

2-pane dialog window

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page-o-links

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and
vs fixed column arrangement, pairs of icon+textlabel

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tiles with huge icons

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informative... or cluttered?

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Feel like Captain Obvious in posting this, but here's a start: bullet item: What makes antiX unique? What are its outstanding features?

bullet item: ( heritage / context ) antiX is built upon Debian GNU/Linux {
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}

bullet item: ( fellowship ) shout-outs, links... to Mepis, etc.

bullet item: (linked from welcome, or from within User Guide) ~~ For each pre-installed app which appears in the desktop menu, attempt to round up links to
its"project page" (or the homepage of its author) and /or its official docs site + supportforum / bugtracker

bullet item: categorical shortlists of interesting sites, with a cautionary comment about installing software from unverified sources
Links labeled"software links","linux news sites","general linux forums" etc could each just point to forum thread.
Antix users (not the devs, officially) would be posting links to sites they feel are meritworthy.

a wonderful resource that I wish EVERY distro would recognize, and link to, in user docs:

PCLinuxOS Magazine

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monthly free eZine covering programs for Linux desktop computing. Articles are well illustrated and are available both as htm and PDF.
backissues archive spans 2006--present

Having a Welcome / Whats New / Help page pop up would be helpful to noobies, with the option of it no longer showing up after installation. Maybe explaining how to set up wicd? Or the Home Page in the Browser explaining Whats New? Although on a LiveCD it would seem to be a NAG, once you have it installed, that would disappear by choice.

My preference on this sort of thing is KISS, because the main point of the thing is to pull users inside.

If this were MX, for instance, I would have a few links to existing website pages to avoid duplication of effort, maybe like this:

• 
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  linktext was:"Overview"
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• 
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  url was:"http://www.mepiscommunity.org/features"
  linktext was:"Features"
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• 
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  linktext was:"Support"
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• 
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• 
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For user appeal, I would think about including one of DO's videos linked behind an image.

BTW: an alternative would be to develop a useful and good-looking html doc that would be assigned as the default browser's home page. That is my current project for MX, though I need some time to finish it.

Jerry wrote:BTW: an alternative would be to develop a useful and good-looking html doc that would be assigned as the default browser's home page. That is my current project for MX, though I need some time to finish it.

The html document was the plan as part of the start screen if it was requested. The"startup screen" would be a lightweight container like the help viewer adrian made for MX that would display the html document.

Edit:
Html layout similar to the"page-o-links" or the magia screen as linked by skidoo.
Common documents (wicd setup, using the control center, quick guide to the desktop, etc... ) would be locally installed (in the iso) other information would link to the online help (user should not notice unless the network is down or slow)

Dave, here is a compromise that might work for both developers and newbies. Have a small gtkdialog app that puts a"What's New" button on the screen, like the"Restart Session" button in the"Exit Session" dialog (which I LOVE, BTW).

The tussle is between opt-in and opt-out. Developers and anyone who boots often hate opt-out because it is just one more thing they are forced to do on every boot. But newbies don't know they should opt-in. The beauty of having a conspicuous button on the screen is that it is obvious to newbies but it is still opt-in and you aren't forcing long-time users and developers to opt-out many times per day.

The urge to remove the button will be much less than the urge to remove a big window in the middle of the screen, especially if we use wmctrl to put the button below other windows. This means we won't have to"automagically" remove it. The user can choose to remove it or not by editing a standard startup file. Not only is this easier for us, it means the button will be around longer which makes it more likely people will actual read what it links to. IMO, forcing people to opt-out is too much like Windows crapware.

Roky, I hear you about the"paint drying" window. We discussed something like this over on the MX forums this past summer. I feel very strongly that if there is text that users will see over and over again then the best thing by far is to keep it as neutral and professional as possible. Any attempt at humor or jocularity will get stale after the 111th time.

Here is another option. Use a cookie file. It would be like the"fortune" program. We create a file with a saying on each line and a line is picked at random to replace"paint drying".

Here is a way to pick a line at random using Bash: I like having the little splash while the desktop gets set up; the question in my mind is what it should say. I'm a sucker for random cookies, if they are decent. But maybe that's just me.

Have a small gtkdialog app that puts a"What's New" button on the screen

OMG, he said the G-word !
Across the past 2 years I've wished antiX would ship with gtkdialog.
Yeah, it's no longer blessed by debian (and is basically unsupported, period). So what?
just checked. it's back, in sid repo:
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Even if few, or none, of the official antiX utils make use it, its availability should attract users (doers) from the Puppian userbase.

I agree that a lightweight html container (chromeless browser) would be best choice for displaying the welcome dialog.
Task-specific dialogs/menus created using yad or gtkdialog seem ridiculously complicated to write/maintain/translate.

I like having the little splash while the desktop gets set up; the question in my mind is what it should [randomly display]

I _really_ like those -- I've learned a lot from seeing bite-sized nuggets displayed in various contexts.
That's a project separate from the welcome help"dialog window" though, and I suspect choice of content depends whether the box must be dismissed or auto-closes.
In the latter case, a shorter display duration constrains how much info one can see/digest, eh.
For random presentation, subject matter could (biting my tongue, want to type should) include cli command + description pairs.
Goal is to increase user awareness of the myriad inbuilt goodies (gems) which aren't otherwise exposed via menus.
Another favorite of mine is Did you know... presenting nuggets which, elsewhere, would wind up as"A"s in FAQ pages.

bullet point: mention the freeforums"slash etc" quirk/bug, and explain a workaround

(not displayed on the main welcome screen but easily visible in the docs)

skidoo, the following antiX apps use gtkdialog:

antix-system.sh
antixcc.sh
antixcckeyboard.sh
antixccmouse.sh
antixccslim.sh
antixscreenshot.sh
exitantix.sh
mountbox
phonebookantix.sh
remastercc.sh
user-management

I love your suggestion to include a warning about the /etc quirk in our documentation.

As for a cookie file, I was thinking of using a pre-existing file/list of short quotes. My thought was to use short one-liners. This is to reduce the amount of developer time required.

skidoo - antiX has always shipped with gtkdialog (except core, of course)