[Bf-docboard] Blender 2.40 QuickStart Guide (FINAL)

[Frédéric van der Essen]

For me, the guide shouldn't try to convince the user how great it is.
That's the job of the website and marketting brochure. Once the
artist downloads blender, he must already know that blender is
the coolest piece of software in the universe ^^

But since i seem very alone defending that point, then let the
quickstart guide be orange, kungfu and shiny :D


Well, if most of you think that orange is cooler, then let it be :)

Jef Jansen a écrit :

> Hoi Frederic and Ewout,
>
> Ewout has a big clue. The essence "the quickstart is a must have" next 
> to the keyboard it's a excellent help. Quicstart in blue orange . 
> Print it the way YOU like it and help is there.
>
> Just a short comment before I leave my Mac for a week.
>
> Greetings,
> Merry Christmas and a Blenderfull Year
>
> Jef
>
>
> Op 23-dec-05 om 00:49 heeft Ewout Fernhout het volgende geschreven:
>
>> Hello Frédéric,
>> First of all I want to start by saying you did a great job at making
>> this quickstart chart. It's nice for people to have on their desks
>> when they just downloaded blender and don't know where to start. It's
>> a very good reference for those difficult first days :o)
>>
>> Now I think there's a few things we want to accomplish with this
>> chart. The most important and also the most obvious thing is that we
>> want to show the user how blender works. However, that's not the only
>> thing in my opinion. It needs to shine a bit aswell, after all this
>> will be used by artists, not technicians! I totally understand your
>> comments about being distracted, but only partly agree in this case.
>> Especially since you do not seem to be working by this principle
>> yourself. I found it very strange that you tried to make the icons
>> something they are not. Why do you make 'fancy' vector icons that are
>> based on the icons in the GUI, instead of actually using those? After
>> all, that's what the user sees! It looks like you tried to make the
>> document "shining" (as you call it) there aswell...
>> Also, you say that the user knows it's Blender, but that doesn't mean
>> it doesn't need the Blender stilo (and logo for that matter).
>> I actually think that the chart is something between a marketing
>> brochure and an educative document, since the user needs to be
>> 'persuaded' to use blender. Look at it this way: if the user got a dry
>> list of shortkeys and icons without any stiling, he/she would probably
>> not be encouraged to read it.
>>
>> I find the ink problem a non-argument. That's for poor people, they
>> should probably not print at all. If it was a whole book(let) I would
>> agree, but this is just a sheet of paper, where a couple of more
>> inkspots don't matter that much. Again, it's not a russian technical
>> document (nofi). I do agree on the saturation, but it's hard balancing
>> between boring and attractive.
>>
>> That said, I think we can draw some conclusions about how the document
>> should look (these are all my opinion and I invite everyone to discuss
>> this).
>>
>> * The document should be clearly structured, so the user can easily 
>> find things.
>> * Attention should be drawn to the important things.
>> * The icons should be the actual icons used, not some fancy loose 
>> interpretation
>> * It's Blender, don't make it look like a generic document. Style
>> consistency comforts the user/reader. What does a Blender logo
>> hurt/break?
>>
>> Now about the colors. I think that, if I had to choose between your
>> greyish blue or blender blue, I would opt for the last for consistency
>> and because the greyish blue you used lacks definition in this
>> context. However, that particular blue is pretty dark, so maybe blue
>> is not a good choice after all. Blender.org also makes use of a lot of
>> light-grey tints, perhaps use that if you want to save on ink?
>>
>> I would still opt for the orange. Why? Because it looks nice. I know
>> it's saturated, but it's just one page. It's not like people will have
>> to concentrate a lot on the page for long periods of time. I actually
>> printed the last version by Pierre-Luc Auclair, and it's easy to read!
>> The first comment I would (rather) give is that the font is probably
>> too small. I know you're aiming for a one page document, but if you're
>> talking about readability, I think that issue is far more important
>> than the orange bars.
>>
>> About the document size: that's probably caused by the soft drop
>> shadows. Your solution (which is what exactly what I proposed earlier
>> and nicely done!) is better I think. The header images are just taking
>> 10kb extra, which is not a big case IMO. Even the size it is now,
>> 200kb, what's that anyway?
>>
>> Ewout
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