The Welcome Page of ParaView doesn’t offer any functionality other than seeing visualization examples and getting started guide. So, this page doens’t seem very relevant to ParaView users.
We could use this welcome page to improve user experience by displaying most common users action are willing to do when opening ParaView : opening a recent state file, opening a recent data file or connecting to a server.
For the window not to be a constraint to the user, it should be closable very easily, so as soon as the user press a key or click outside of the window, it should automatically be closed.
Also, if we add this window to ParaView, I think we should find a way to unset the previous “Show Welcome Dialog” of the user settings, otherwise some user might miss this new window which can now be useful to everyone. Here is a POC with the design I imagined for the window :
By clicking a state file or a data file it directly open it, and if the data is not in our recent we still have a button to open other files. The same goes for the server where we display the server name. By hovering a file we have the full file path.
I’m waiting for your feed back, I think it can be a great feature that improves user experience
As an old-timey ParaView developer, I’d like to give some context on the ParaView welcome page. The page is not designed for most ParaView users. The page is specifically designed for new users. In particular, it is the first thing that a user that has never used ParaView sees.
One of the problems that we have with the ParaView user experience is that it is overwhelming. There are three long rows of toolbar buttons and a really confusing array of menus. It is often compared to an airplane cockpit. There is no way a person would be expected to make anything work without some instruction. We’ve talked endlessly about simplifying the interface, but we also don’t want to hamper the utility for experienced users.
The welcome window was introduced to help solve this problem. It is meant to be the opposite of the ParaView interface: a very simple, minimal interface to provide a brand new user what they need to get started. By design, the welcome page is void of all but two functions: a getting started guide and example visualization. The first button provides a new user very simple instructions that in 5 minutes will give them the knowledge they need to get started with ParaView. The second button provides a list of some of the things you can do with ParaView and a demonstration of how they are done.
So, for most users, the welcome page is useless by design. I also get annoyed at clicking Don’t show this window again every time I download a new version of ParaView. But I would be hesitant to add any feature that would distract from these two functions.
That’s a good idea. I think everyone will appreciate getting around the welcome screen fast.
