Settings help / user-friendliness

yeah, i agree with ^^^.

minimizing settings (nd in particular the knobs that *has* to be turned) is good when possible and is of course something we should always strive for. but we should never drop an advanced option just for the cause of not confusing a poor nub. replay gain for instance, i don't see why that shouldn't be in the gui. it's useful. tuning the values would be a pain if you have to write the xml and restart every time. it doesn't hurt. it's easy to read up on what they do if you are curious. i don't see the harm.

(2012-06-03 15:39)procrastinator Wrote:  

(2012-06-03 14:44)Japaja Wrote:  Isn't this the way all of us learned?

This kind-of misses the point. The idea is to make XBMC more accessible, and not exclude those who don't want to invest much of their time looking through the wiki/forum/Google if they want to do anything more advanced than add a source and scan it to the library. Yes, all of us did that it that way, but that's not the kind of person this is primarily trying to help. It would also have the side-effect of getting those people rolling quicker than they would do otherwise, but it's mainly aimed at those who just want to use XBMC effectively and make the adjustments they want to without having to do a lot of searching and reading up.

EDIT: Note: I am aware that there are advanced setting that new users probably wouldn't and shouldn't play around with, but I don't think that giving an indication of what those features do is a bad thing. If the "tool tip" feature were in place I wouldn't expect an advanced feature's description to be exhaustive, but just to give an impression of what the feature does. This would allow the user to know whether they want to make use of it, and investigate further (online) how to do so if they do.

agree, well said.

what about a "installation wizard", which should run automatically at first run after installation and then whenever the user needs/wants to? the first screen should offer perhaps 4 options:

1) default installation, minimal questions (or none)
2) basic options, explained for begginers and more advanced options left as default
3) advanced options, minimal explanation of basic options but all advanced options with full explanations. Maybe some options for advancedsettings.xml?
4) leave me alone, I am Da Boss and will configure everything by hand

when run, every option should offer, in addition of whatever it is, "default" and "leave at it is" (if it is different from default)

Also, some options could be set in groups, to speed everything a little when applicable

Also, with some options, in mode 2 at least, should "educate" the user (for example, telling what "clean database" does)