[Bf-committers] "Blender, an appraisal from a first time user"

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi,

Here is a friendly mail from a Linux user I had. He failed using Blender for a simple video task.
http://download.blender.org/institute/firsttime.pdf

I'm happy that KDEnlive worked for him, and I explained to him that Blender is an advanced 3D creation suite which you have to invest time in to understand it well.

Nevertheless, three lessons we can learn from this:

1) Meaningless tooltips

The "System info" menu has as tooltip "Generate system info". That's insufficient. It leaves very relevant information to the notifier button that's very easy too miss. 

2) Meaningless error message

"Report Error. File format is not supported in...".

What is that supposed to mean? Errors can easily give more details, especially mentioning the function or operator that throws the error and/or about the context or editor it is in.

3) Blender support section: Tutorials.

http://www.blender.org/support/tutorials/

There is no beginner tutorial on blender.org for newbies how to quickly get a video edited.
Anyone knows one? Then I'll add it there.

-Ton-

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Ton Roosendaal  -  ton at blender.org   -   www.blender.org
Chairman Blender Foundation - Producer Blender Institute
Entrepotdok 57A  -  1018AD Amsterdam  -  The Netherlands