Welcome dialog after a new install or update
Operating System: all
Description of the feature
This is linked to #751 (closed) and #1272 (closed). Basically I don't believe we should have a splash screen at every startup (this is just annoying) but history showed us there are some useful stuff to tell the users after an update:
- very interesting new features which people who didn't read the website news would miss;
- controversial changes (design stuff like icon or theme changes, change in behavior of existing features, etc.);
- stuff which we advise people to switch on yet should tell them about (like the update check as it implies web requests).
Also it would be awesome if the welcome dialog could also propose to set some of the new settings. This would be duplicate of what is in Preferences, except we highlight their existence by showing them after an update. This is typically what Blender did after the Blender 2.80 update (some of the settings are settable in the splash screen, possibly the most controversial ones, like the left/right selection choice).
Last but not least, this welcome dialog could have a button "Show me the new stuff" which would highlight widgets by playing a scenario similar to what is shown in #1272 (closed).
Use cases
The use case is to communicate a bit more with people, as many don't read news, and sometimes some people don't like some changes and resent us for not "telling" (even if written in the news, but as said, they don't read). There is also the fact that some defaults don't fit everyone, and even though it's changeable in Preferences, some people don't like even just the fact that the defaults are not the ones they would have chosen. They don't care it's customizable, only defaults matter for them (which is not entirely wrong; we all know the importance of defaults). So basically it's a "first time dialog" emphasizing some more controversial changes and informing of meaningful new features.
Steps
Here is what should happen for it to be done:
-
GIMP should be updated to save the last run version as a property in a config file (likely gimprc
). This way, it can compare to its running version and run the welcome dialog on next first run. -
Develop a small infrastructure where we can easily set up the text for new features and maybe settings we want to allow in the welcome dialog. This should be fed with non-code data, so that it could be filled in by non-developers. It could contain:
- A short text
- Possibly a welcome image illustrating the release
- List of noteworthy features
- List of settings which we want to emphasize by giving ability to set them from Welcome dialog
-
Create a new welcome dialog which uses this data to display the corresponding welcome dialog. -
Also add some menu item to be able to explicitly recall the welcome dialog for any past version (by default, it pops up once only, but you should be able to recall the dialog if needed/wanted of course). -
Optionally also improve the infrastructure to also add "Show me the new stuff" scenarios à-la #1272 (closed). -
Add "Quick setup" for a few more visible/controversial changes, such as: themes, icons, tool groups… -
Experiment with the idea of adding a "Start creating" (or alike) tab which could be shown every time (upon checkbox choice). You'd have list of last opened images and a "new image" button for instance.