Hello,

I'm using AS (Android Studio) for Android development, and AS have a very nice feature: "Tip of the day" window, that appear in IDE startup.

Please see this screenshot showing the feature:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/135304375/tip.png

Seems very nice to implement this feature in Lazarus IDE. :-)

Thanks!

The problem with "tip of the day", is that it must be maintained according to the IDE updates.
"Tip of the day" would be useless (and harmful), if it suggests a feature that's no longer in the IDE.

Another complication of the "TOTD" is that it needs to be translated. Otherwise it's also useless, if the IDE runs in a language different that IDE.

"TOTD" must also be "environment" aware. Just as on your example - there're hot-keys present. But a user could modify the hot-keys for themselves. As well as "default" hot key layout is different from OS to OS. So the implementation is not as trivial as "just read the list of html pages and tips foldere and present them to a user on start".

To summarize: adding "TOTD" to Lazarus will increase the maintenance cost of the system!

Instead of having TOTD - wiki pages should be popularized. Reason - much greater number of people could contribute to it. Removing a need of developers (or release builders) to maintain the set of "tips" in IDE.
Also articles and personal blogs do typically cover a lot of "tips" that could be found in TOTD.

thanks,
Dmitry

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and if make it loads from the laz wiki? maybe help centering all data...

Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2014 16:06:53 -0400
From:
To:
Subject: Re: [Lazarus] [FEATURE REQUEST] Tip of the day

The problem with "tip of the day", is that it must be maintained according to the IDE updates. "Tip of the day" would be useless (and harmful), if it suggests a feature that's no longer in the IDE.

Another complication of the "TOTD" is that it needs to be translated. Otherwise it's also useless, if the IDE runs in a language different that IDE.

"TOTD" must also be "environment" aware. Just as on your example - there're hot-keys present. But a user could modify the hot-keys for themselves. As well as "default" hot key layout is different from OS to OS. So the implementation is not as trivial as "just read the list of html pages and tips foldere and present them to a user on start".

To summarize: adding "TOTD" to Lazarus will increase the maintenance cost of the system!

Instead of having TOTD - wiki pages should be popularized. Reason - much greater number of people could contribute to it. Removing a need of developers (or release builders) to maintain the set of "tips" in IDE.

Also articles and personal blogs do typically cover a lot of "tips" that could be found in TOTD.

thanks,
Dmitry

On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 3:33 PM, silvioprog wrote:

Hello,
I'm using AS (Android Studio) for Android development, and AS have a very nice feature: "Tip of the day" window, that appear in IDE startup.

Please see this screenshot showing the feature:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/135304375/tip.png

Seems very nice to implement this feature in Lazarus IDE. :-) Thanks!

And slow down the IDE startup.
Also the wiki would loose it flexibility, since the page must always be there.

thanks,
Dmitry

On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 4:18 PM, William Ferreira <

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On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 5:33 PM, Dmitry Boyarintsev <

wrote: And slow down the IDE startup.

Just uncheck the "Show tips on startup" option. ;-)

Also the wiki would loose it flexibility, since the page must always be there.

Rather, it would enrich visualizations of the wiki. I personally almost never visit there in the wiki page.

Lazarus site (http://lazarus.freepascal.org) uses TOTD in your home page.

On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 5:06 PM, Dmitry Boyarintsev <

Delphi (XEs shows the Embarcadero tips from your web site, suggesting frameworks, books etc.), Android Studio, Eclipse, NetBeans, Aptana Studio, Visual Studio, SmartGIT and a lot of others IDEs uses a TOTD style.

Well, it was just a feature request based in an useful idea, but it can be discarded without problem. :-)

On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 5:18 PM, William Ferreira <

wrote: and if make it loads from the laz wiki? maybe help centering all data...

Some renowned IDEs using this style.

Lazarus already have the help online or offline, TOTD would be a complement. :-)

[...] Well, it was just a feature request based in an useful idea, but it can be discarded without problem. :-)

Feel free to create a package that adds the TOTD.
If it is nice, we can add it by default.

Mattias

Nice. It can be done with TFPHttpClient + IPro Html Panel (both already installed in Lazarus by default :-) ).

Could anyone send the PHP part of Lazarus web site that download TOTDs from wiki?

silvioprog wrote

Could anyone send the PHP part of Lazarus web site that download TOTDs from wiki?

The TOTDof the web site are not from the wiki.
They are in a file on the web server.

http://svn.freepascal.org/svn/lazaruswebsite/trunk/site/tips.txt

As for my 2 penny on TOTD:
I think locally stored are preferable. This makes it easier to have unique ID, and know which ones were already shown, so a new one can be shown.

A dialogue at startup that could warn of any known major problems or otherwise display a tip or season's greeting might be attractive, but it should definitely not be enabled by default since it could be interpreted as a "phone home" that enabled the project to monitor Lazarus users.

Something like RSS might have a place here, but in any event startup shouldn't be delayed if connection can't be made.

That would be nice.

[..] Something like RSS might have a place here, but in any event startup shouldn't be delayed if connection can't be made.

That's not nice.

Mattias