You know these super cool interactive on boarding tours that the cool site all have? Guess what Drupal 8 core ships with a Tour API. In this session we will explore:
- When to create an interactive tour
- How to create an interactive tour
- Who benefits from an interactive tour
Cameron & Wilding Ltd - http://www.cameronandwilding.com/
7. Tours in core
● Included with Drupal 8
● Based on joyride jQuery plugin
● Configuration based, translatable
● YAML
When you have a web application
which requires some getting used to
from your users.
8. Tours in contrib
A few modules try to leverage tours
in core and build new functionality to
make it easier for other to contribute
tours:
● Tour builder
● Tour UI
9. Why tours?
● Alternative to providing extensive documentation
● Bundled with your Drupal build and version controlled
● Encourages self-paced learning
● Encourages splitting larger tasks into small chunks of
knowledge
● Enables people to visit the resources multiple times
● Because Drupal 8 is so cool
10. Primary use cases
● To draw the user's attention to critical components of the
interface, especially those elements that might not be
immediately obvious
● To guide the user through a workflow
12. Anatomy of a tour [1/2]
YAML properties:
- id
- module
- label
- routes
- langcode
- tips
13. Anatomy of a tour [2/2]
Tips: core ships with text
and image plugin types
- id
- plugin
- label
- body
- location
- weight
- attributes
14. General principles [1/2]
General principles for tours as they are captured within the context
of Drupal user interface standards:
● Tours are a complement (not a substitute) for good interface
design.
● Tour text should follow the Drupal style guide for interface text.
● The tour should start and end in a logical place
15. General principles [2/2]
● If the tour is intended to illustrate a workflow, it should stay
focused on completion of a single task.
● Avoid providing tangential information.
● If the tour is intended to highlight the UI, it may not be
necessary or desirable to include every option for every widget.
● Keep tip content short, preferably 1 to 2 sentences.
Provide examples to give a deeper understanding of tips
context.
16. Tour text standards [1/2]
● Follow the style guidelines for Interface text
● Keep it simple.
● Use -ing verb mode for the tip label.
○ Viewing log messages instead of View log messages.
17. Tour text standards [1/3]
● Start the tour with a general model (not linked to any element)
for a general introduction.
● Imagine the most basic task possible and write to that. Don’t try
to cover every use case.
● Remember that your audience is a new user, so assume no
Drupal knowledge.
18. Tour text standards [2/3]
● If possible, keep the tour to fewer than 8 tips.
● If possible, keep to a single sentence per tip of less than 25
words.
● A tour tip is not UI text. Don’t duplicate the UI text.
● A tour is not documented. You can link to documentation at the
end if you think it’s useful.
● Doesn't explain stock Drupal page elements such as
breadcrumbs or pagers.
19. Tour text standards [3/3]
● Use links where useful and ensure they will never break.
● Avoid complex tour tip selectors such as :first-child or :nth-child
(n) as these at present cannot be tested via simpletest. Instead,
add classes into the body to make the selectors easier to
understand.