Proposal: Show tips in the splash screen #43451
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The idea is to show some useful one-liner tips about non-obvious features on the splash screen. This way users might learn things like alt-wheel on enums, ctrl-c for RGB curves and so on. It is pretty simple to fit into the splash screen, just would probably need some more attention to font style:
(please excuse the crudity of the model -- didn't have time to build it to scale or paint it)
It could be done as a simple text file from which random line is read on startup and displayed on the splash.
Changed status to: 'Open'
Added subscribers: @Sergey, @JulianEisel, @ideasman42, @ThomasDinges, @pablovazquez
Added subscriber: @PawelLyczkowski-1
A big +1 from here. @PawelLyczkowski-1 has this in his UI proposal doc including quite a few example sentences :)
@PawelLyczkowski-1/@venomgfx now a nice and shiny design/mockup is needed! Maybe a big info-icon on the left and the text on the right?
I'm available for the coding side of things.
Added subscriber: @ErickNyanduKabongo
Here are my takes:
I'd go with simplicity on this one : )
Added subscriber: @MarcClintDion
Textfield hover copy and Paste is one of those things that's super useful but not so easy to stumble upon.
Added subscriber: @JonathanWilliamson
Big +1 from me also, and very nice mockups @plyczkowski.
Added subscriber: @cedriclepiller
Why not put the quick tip in the 3D view ?
Maybe we can make it context sensitive, for exemple, in edit mod, tips for modeling, in the texture editor, tips for painting, in the node editor, tips for nodes.
With the option to hide the tips of course.
@cedriclepiller, not a big fan of that. 1. cause it can be annoying to steadily have popups over the viewport, 2. cause this is a global info, so it should also give tips for things like all the fancy editing options of our number buttons, other areas such as compositor image editor, etc. Having this in the 3D viewport would mean it's rather local/viewport only
Or maybe in the top bar, the problem with the splash screen is that lot of people deactivate it.
Added subscriber: @Carter-10
@cedriclepiller -1 to that.
For tools I would potentially go for the "extended tooltip ala pixologic", but it's low priority. Also, @JonathanWilliamson is currently adding help popups to his Retopoflow, let's see how that goes.
Main requirement for this should be: it never ever shall distract artist. For those who're using blender every day information which randomly appears on the screen might be rather distraction. It's also adds whole bunch of complexity trying to guess what information is most relevant for artist at this exact moment.
I wouldn't consider users disabling splashscreen being a stopper. Main audience of this feature is new artists who are only getting into blender. Don't think their first step is to go into user preferences and disable the splash.
Added subscriber: @Blendify
Why not just make them disableable in user preferences? and not the splash screen in total.
Like you said, it's low priority and I think you want something really easy and fast to make, so if you think, the splash screen is the best for tips, i'm ok.
Or if this is made as an addon
Added subscriber: @liquidape
My preference of the currently shown designs favors @plyzowski's 2nd mockup.
On functionality, it would be nice to have a button or small arrows on either side of the tip to go to the next/previous tips. For those of us that like information overload!
<-- Quick Tip: You can press the arrows on either side of this tip to cycle through tips! -->
+1 @liquidape!
I'd prefer to not add a new UserPref option to this as the UserPrefs are already much to messy. Every new option for them should be rethought twice to make sure it's really worth adding. We could make this an Add-on but I don't see a real problem with having it being not deactivatable - it is just there without being in the way and can be easily closed together with the splash.
Yup. If it were a part of the 3d View HUD that would be another story. But splash is closed when working, so it's not impacting GUI overload then.
Maybe people can offer suggestions on the actual tips, that would be very useful to others and saves the devs a whole lot of time trying to guess what is common knowledge or not.
1: 'Toggle multiple visibility icons in the Outliner/Modifiers by swiping mouse over them'
2: "Copy and Paste can be used to move assets from one running instance of Blender to replace 'Append'"
3: "Having trouble selecting objects in a dense scene? Use Shift+b box select to zoom in on the area of interest"
other suggestions :)
Something else to consider... tips could optionally have a
Find out morebutton, which links to documentation.For example, reference to Walk mode could link to the reference manual on walk mode.
I don';t like idea of next/prev button suggested earlier here. If you want to read all the tips, you've got file locally anyway. It could also be exposed to
Help -> All The Tipsoperator which could show that file.But all the tips should be documented in the manual anyway, in a single page so anyone can grasp though them and see if there's something new. So to see all the tips you just click on the link button on splash or help menu.
And in fact, it should be started from making that page first i think. Then we''ll see if there's enough information in there to bother with the splash screen changes.
As for the code-side it's a bit more tricky than it sounds on the first glance, because of the following things:
Some implementation issues:
.txtfile, no bold characters (as used in some mockups) and each line is a separate tip.... suggest we just keep tips about real basics only - not rendering/cycles specific (to begin with) at least.
Also interested in feedback on possibility to link a tip to the user manual (can be postponed for initial patch too. just suggestion)
@ideasman42, it could be done similarly to translations -- text file could only be in the sources, which gets compressed on compilation and have a header with offsets/lengths. Could also be datatoc-ed which is probably better in that case.
Would make it impossible to browse the file manually, but for that we really need to have manual page.
@Sergey, would keep a bit more simple than datatoc
tips.txt, one tip per line.tips.txt.datais a binary file, containing line offsets, (filesize defines line-count).tips.txt.data, if it doesn't exist or is older thentips.txt, regenerate it.This way loading is reading a random
ushortin one small file, then a direct lookup to a second file (minimal disk activity).Anyone can update the text file without some manual rebuilding steps. (maybe branch users like to include their own)
Where you're proposing to store this
tips.txt.data?dont have strong opinion, user home dir I suppose (where
bookmarks.txtis).Note, we could start make use of
~/.cache/blenderon *nix systems, seeXDG_CACHE_HOME.@MarcClintDion A list of proposed tips is being developed in the UI doc (Though I think it's going to need it's own doc before long as it's growing fast) : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ScPMbHv8WRCU2znB7IU2l-W9hH-NLs5weQKLkjqmgpA/edit#
@Sergey On next/previous button - maybe just a key to go to next tip? Like "space"? The point of the tips is to show random info at a glance - maybe I don't want to go dig for it, but just wast a few minutes looking at little tips. These Tips should be for all users, beginner and pro - remember that a beginner is not going to have any idea how to go to a text file and find it - how operators work - that the space bar opens a search field... I am strongly against forcing somebody to jump through hoops to see simple little tips that are supposed to make the software easier and more enjoyable to learn.
@ideasman42 - On links - I do think it's a good idea for on Tooltip click to open manual entry on that tip for more detailed info - as you said. Maybe underline or format so it looks like a link?
On Context sensitivity - My preference would to stay away from this - My thought is that the tips should be random knowledge about all areas of Blender. If you don't care about BGE, you just won't internalize that tip. This is a learning tool, and if users "turn off" chunks of the learning, they might miss things that might help them or that they don't know that they needed.
Thanks @liquidape, I was about to write on that. @ideasman42 I already added yours (I didn't know about Backspace clearing, that's handy : )
@ideasman42, i don't like that approach, it's messy. it would only be legit if the tips file if officially runtime editable. For that i don't see actual need and for that you would also need to keep file with tips in the user folder since program data is not always editable by users.
IMO, it should be just as simple as:
Format of the file is also really trivial:
Also to be stressed, you don't access anything if splash is not displaying. Which means background mode stays totally unchanged (so renderfarm takes same amount of time to render, unit tests takes the same time to run etc).
Comparing to your approach this would save map geenration on first run and then would save two stat() calls to check timestamps.
Now, all the tips should be short, would say 120 symbols max (or 140 to match twitter ;) This means 1K messages would be around 100K in the memory, uncompressed. That is really nothing, blender grows much faster with all that llvm updates. So where to draw the line? Why matcaps are datatoc-ed and for the tips you want to go over all that filesystem hell?
Woops, sent reply to quick.
@liquidape, it could be a clickable tip which would open all of them in the browser, with nice cross-linking to related chapters and so.
@ideasman42, just throwing another idea.
Why do we worry about this C anyway, can't it be an addon? Quick thoughts:
Just an idea, RFC :)
@ideasman42 one idea i had for a caching system, is to have the same tip from the last time the user opened blender, is cached and when blender is opened again it displays that tip until blender has finished its start up routine then after blender calms down so to speak and then request for getting a new tip. this will save start up time.
Also on being context specific i say no because many users open blender then switch to there context allowing users to never see the tips that are most helpful
Also this program has startup tips simple download (good example)
Link
http://www.open3mod.com/
@sergey.
tips.txt.data- (re: paths users can't always write to). as stated already, this would be in a user writable location same asbookmarks.txtRegarding the addon suggestion, I like it!
details...
@ideasman42, well some misunderstanding in there. What i mean is: why can't we distribute the mapping file as a part of blender installation? So we don't worry about re-generation at all. But if we go with addon (which sounds promising?) guess we don't have other way than worry about cache generation.
On the other hand, it's probably better to go with XDG's ~/.cache approach. That way we'll land the utility functions to access that directory and Cycles's kernel can be moved there as well :) That's another story tho.
And i think it's rather nice if python can extend the splash. Maybe even move the recent files, links etc to py.
Anyway, guess we first need some manual page to gather ll the tips. Do we have one already or maybe it's easy to add one?
Committed addon: blender/blender-addons-contrib@4b8c1acd6e
Committed Blender Menu:
26f9a92453Enable 'Testing' addons to use (
UI -> Splash Tips)It can show tips and optionally a URL link to the manual.
Uses random textfile seek to get the line (has the downside that longer lines increase the chance of showing up).
Some limits:
no line wrapping.- done, although they have to be entered manually blender/blender-addons-contrib@dd12462ba1Example line:
... Which should display
...where (i) is an icon button linking to https://www.blender.org/manual/getting_started/basics/interface/buttons_and_controls.html
If this is a reasonable start it could be enabled by default.
@ideasman42 Could you also post screenshots.
This comes with blender, just enable the addon.
I don't build blender yet. Nvm then, I'll wait for the buildbot.
@ideasman42, it's not totally great idea to do manual breaks in the original string. You would never be able to solve translated tips wrapping that way i'm afraid.
@Sergey yes, its weak, we really need a line wrapping UI label.
@ideasman42, there another thing which i'm not currently sure what's the best way to approach to it.
Basically, translation team should be aware of all the tips so they can translate them. Ideally it should somehow appear in .pot file. But how to get the messages from the addon..
@Sergey - we have scripts to extract strings for translations, so they can just get this text too, its not so complicated.
Addons do have a way to provide their own translations too, but not sure if we would make use of that,
@ideasman42, as wasn't aware addons have a way to provide translations. It's good then.
So how to move forward with this task?
Did anyone test it? :)
@ideasman42, I can test further this week (on a train at the moment). My first test a few days ago seemed good.
Yup.
A couple of issues from me. Screenshot for reference:
The i icon for more info on a tip is a nice touch. I would change it to the website icon though - it would also warn that it's a link to online documentation, and so it will open the browser for instance.
I agree with all of @PawelLyczkowski-1's comments.
Beyond that, though, it's working really nice! The website option is a good one, which will really help make tips more useful.
re: Agree on tip format (we can change easily, just noting we may want to change it)
I'm not to sure what you mean by this?
re: Add support for translations?
I think we should do this.
re: Should this addon be enabled by default?
Yes! Tips are most valuable to new users, who likely have not modified their settings yet. If the add-on is not enabled by default then the users that most need it will miss out on the benefit.
Agree with @PawelLyczkowski-1 too :)
blender/blender-addons-contrib@60bf224aea
Tip:prefix, increase lower margin@JonathanWilliamson, re: tip format,
See:
https://developer.blender.org/diffusion/BAC/browse/master/ui_splash_tips/tips.txt
The lines at the bottom include URL's to
https://www.blender.org/manual/, newlines are inserted explicitly. Otherwise its plaintext.Removed subscriber: @MarcClintDion
Here is an other problem I believe it because my DPI is 110 so some missing part doesn't appear
When reset 72 tips work good.
@ErickNyanduKabongo, this is a problem.
DPI scales the text but not the splash width.
We would need a line wrapping label to solve this properly.
Added subscriber: @ManuJarvinen
Added subscriber: @Ton
In general this discussion is so disappointing... I thought we were going to try to stop doing things like this, but instead try to make things work more targeted at audiences. For people who want to learn Blender, we have to help them with that in smart ways. For power users, we have to help them too. And we certainly should stop trying to be lazy and easy. Code a training mode in blender. Think about how to configure Blender for them. Etc.
@Ton -
A) the idea is to show snippets of info that can be easily be seen/absorbed, not a full tutorial mode.
B) full tutorial mode is a good idea that I would like to see too - but that is a much more in depth project aimed at intensive learning. Blender & any program with substantial depth requires constant learning - you never will "Know it all". I strongly think that people learning the basics will go into a "tutorial" mode, but once those are learned you would rarely see people going into that mode. The tips allow constant learning with little overhead.
C) From personal experience in gaming - I've learned TONS of things from little tips about little interesting things you can do in a game. Like Blender, World of Warcraft is an incredibly complex program with an insane amount of options - many of these would have gone unnoticed by me without the tips section: http://goo.gl/fuzXxa
D) It sounds like the tips are going addon route - if they annoy you that much, turn em' off! I agree that perhaps we could have an opt-out near the tip so they could be turned off super easily without need to jump into prefs to turn them off.
E) Comments like "In general this discussion is so disappointing... I thought we were going to try to stop doing things like this, but instead try to make things work more targeted at audiences." can really take the wind out of peoples sails and I don't think are conducive to the conversation at hand - you are devaluing every bodies opinion that has been posted above. I'm glad for input, even input that brings up opposing opinions, but comments like this bring the dev process more into forum land - and your comments hold much more weight than others due to your position. Don't underestimate your words and how they can play with the emotions of people that are volunteering their time to make the best program they/we can!
Added subscriber: @quacker
I like the idea of showing quick tips on the splash screen. These can be good for both beginners and power users (eg. useful less used shorcuts, general info about certain 'hidden-gem' addons, general quick tips about improving usability, rendering, UI, etc etc). I'm sure you'll find an abundance of tips to keep things interesting and fresh for both beginner and advanced users.
@Ton I'm not a fan of the 1998 style popup window to be honest....never found it pleasing to navigate nor read. I agree with much of what @liquidape said...the idea is to show something that would make the user say "Oh I didn't know that existed in Blender", not a full blown training mode which you won't find a lack of online.
The discussion here is about making it subtle and optional which is healthy IMO. Clutter can be reduced a bit through other means, like displaying the Links section in a dropdown list perhaps?
The UI team is new still, it has to be empowered, but also still has prove itself. We should definitely treat UI design as something requiring expertise and years of experience just like any other contribution we want in Blender. We want high quality, simplicity, the best design possible. And we should acknowledge that merely using software doesn't make anyone such an expert - which makes the topic so difficult to communicate about.
To enable the new UI team to get involved and help them to grow and become expert, we agreed on them to help out on approved development tasks, to help active developers with UI design jobs. That can be for Lukas (doing new Cache Library ui), or for Viewport team (how should workflow-oriented draw modes look like), or for Custom Manipulators (including invisible ones), or for rigging debugging tools and despgraph, or a better workflow for adding Drivers, or for Joshua with Action Fake users, .. and so on.
For the UI team it's also a sensible requirement to first understand how things work and were meant to work. Design-compatble solutions are much more future proof and pleasant to use than solutions that fight with it.
We also agreed on not attempting to make everyone happy with a single configure or "default" presentation. Newbies and kids or occasional users have just different requirements than the expert users. Even the experts mind to differ. That's the 'workflow' project.
Just as design exercise example: what we could do on startup of newly installed Blender, is:
In Learning mode the splash then switches to a new picture, which can be a slideshow even of tips or config choices for noobs (do you have a laptop, or mouse or trackpad or tablet, etc). Learning mode also should have the most minimal keymap possible, which we then promote as default for training and tutorials as well. If needed, customized learning modes can be configured by CGcookie or Guru for their needs.
Expert mode gives a splash with options to choose from preconfigured workflows (old fart mode, motion tracker workflow, sculpt/modeler, etc) - or Maya/Max maps , and the own saved configs.
We can also check on having splash (on mousemove or keypress) change into a tip-splash - with images even! - and with option in that tip splash to disable it (and save config). Heck we could play animation tutorials in the splash. Or turn the whole UI in a tutorial for people.
This is just an example of work I'd encourage to see more here. Many ways are possible. Let's not be lazy. Don't choose the obvious (we don't need help for that anyway). Impress me I'd say. :)
And this I mean too. It's just my humble attempt to push people a bit. Dare to be excellent :)
@Ton, its understandable we don't want to have to have long debates each time someone suggests minor UI tweaks (its been an issue in the past),
But don't think its quite fair to define a small change you disagree with as lazy, We make small changes/improvements to Blender all the time, (resolving paper-cuts, odd/behavior).
With the UI topics we need to take extra care of course. we don't want random stuff being added haphazardly (thats why this is a design tasks being discussed)
This kind of stuff is always subjective, I understand there are legitimate arguments against:
On the other hand I've seen experienced artists on some of the open-projects be completely unaware of really useful features (local mode, view dolly... manipulator tricks) - these are documented in the manual too.
Even experienced users miss some corners of Blender, or forget about features if they don't use Blender regularly.
I'm surprised you suggest to have this a pop-up, to me this is always the most annoying thing - every time you have to click them away, Isn't not making it a pop up means its at least not annoying more experienced users? Anyone who wants can disable the addon or disable the splash screen.
We can define it as a mis-use of the splash-screen, or too much effort put into a weak panacea that avoids solving real problems of discoverability... or postpone it until we have Blender 101 getting worked on.
Am not pushing to have this in Blender, but think these suggestions should be discussed on their own merits, or postponed if we prefer to tackle issues like this as part of a larger project.
@ideasman42
A compromise would be to keep it in the splash as currently, but add a "Don't show tips" checkbox there as well. Hiding the way to disable tips in the Add-ons tab in the Preferences is the kind of thing that created so much hidden functionality in the first place.
@Ton, it's a design task to discuss some idea, and this one was supposed to be least controversial, not lazy. All the rest @ideasman42 did already cover.
Tip to add: "You can Extend Vert Slide by holding Alt while sliding a vertex."
Added subscriber: @RedDragon
This comment was removed by @RedDragon
@RedDragon, please only comment relating to the design task. (general suggestions are off topioc)
Added subscriber: @xan2622
Are there any plans to resurrect the "Splash Startup Tips" add-on? (sadly, it seems that it has been removed: developer.blender.org/rBACa78b21df97bcca764128a3969317a40972b8d0f7)
I think that Blender should show tips (at least, on the splashscreen).
IMO, they can be really useful for new users (but also for more experienced users). The splashscreen is a good spot to quickly learn new hotkeys or read short informations about how to perform various modeling tasks.
And maybe, to enhance tips further, to have a visual demonstration of the tip, the two or three lines of tips could eventually contain a link leading to a short tutorial video (that could be hosted on the official Blender Youtube account).
I hope that it will be considered to bring them back. I haven't used Blender 2.7x versions that much but I have been missing tips in 2.8x/2.9x.
Added subscriber: @Harley
I quite dislike this idea.
Typically a desire for having Startup Tips is to provide this to other people. So we might say "well, I personally hate them, don't need them, never read them, turn them off right away" but "this could be good for new users". The problem is that nobody like these things. They never have. And we shouldn't try to invent and imagine a mythical user who will.
Blender is huge and complicated. What is the chance that any single random "tip" will come up that both applies to you and is also something you don't already know? It is near-zero for almost every person. We might imagine otherwise, but it is unlikely.
For example, we might imagine these as "lesser-known shortcuts" and start with "You can use ALT-wheel to scroll through enum properties" but then many interactions are actually set in keymaps and could change, by the very users who might change them. But then the audience for this needs to also know what an "enum" is and also what a "property" is. This is simple information for us, but would not be known by the very target of this tip. So this is perfect for someone who does not know this yet does know what an enum and property is. If those circumstances are true when this particular tip comes up, which is one-at-a-time over a long period of time.
Contrast this with putting all these important tips in a single short document and linking to it. "Quick Tips" or in a "Getting Started" guide or similar. You can choose to read them all in 5 minutes, rather than being subjected to a drip of them, one at a time, randomly over the next year when each one may or may not apply. LOL
These things are dumb and most users would not want their web browser to do this, nor their word processor. I'm not an expert at Excel but I don't want it to do this. Gimp is complicated but I don't want it to do this. I have much to learn about Inkscape but would turn this off immediately if they did this. Instead they offer lots of help, tutorials and guides. Not randomly spit out as unwanted text on the bottom of a dialog that is already full of unnecessary distraction.
Clippy is dead for a reason.
Added subscriber: @jenkm
I agree with Harley.
Such hints can work if there is a long load, as in games where users are still forced to wait and there is a chance that they will read these hints. Although I don't remember ever reading such hints even in games. You are focused on your task and don't want to be distracted by outsiders.
After reading a few random tips that are not relevant to you, you will stop paying attention to them, that's for sure. If you want a random hint just google "blender 1 minute tutorial".
And most importantly, there are simply no resources for this. It is better to spend resources on improving the user manual and improving tooltips, there are a lot of things that need to be improved here.
I still think that there are some people who appreciate the concept of seeing tips. Maybe not “Startup Tips” but for example, certain tips that could be shown in certain circumstances (more about that in my "Hotkeys overlays" and “Contextual overlay” paragraphs below).
That being said, I agree that unsolicited “assistants” and “tip popups” that directly appear at startup can be annoying for some people (more about that in my “Assistants” paragraph below).
About Splash Screen tips: IMO, one or two lines at the bottom of the Splash Screen wouldn't have visually bothered me that much.
There are many things in Blender that I still don't know (panels or options that I have not used yet), the desire to see tips (not necessary at startup, but why not during the modeling session) sounds interesting and pertinent to me, and I guess for other users as well.
For both these reasons, I agree that maybe it might not be a good idea to bring back tips on the Splash Screen. But I still think that they would be beneficial for the user elsewhere on the interface, for example, in a corner of the viewport.
In the end, the goal of tips is to teach users something, to finally help them perform tasks faster or more efficiently.
The idea to create a page that would gather all these tips sounds interesting, unfortunately, most users don't like reading. They prefer to watch video tutorials (and not too long ones either).
Of course there's a chance that a user already knows what the tip explains but there's a simple way not to display it again: with a checkbox).
As a Blender developer, I am sure that you have a desire to make Blender better and easier to use, by making it more user-friendly. And this is also what this whole discussion is about: help the user know how to use Blender more efficiently. And I think that showing tips and hotkeys onscreen belong to this "user-friendliness" category.
A few years ago, the "project 101" aimed to make Blender easier to use for new 3D artists.
From https://code.blender.org/2016/12/the-blender-101-project-and-you/ :
There are many newbies or mid-level users among the Blender community and I am pretty sure that many of them would appreciate a simpler first hours experience.
tbh, I wouldn't want Blender to have a special (ultra simple) workspace (with a trimmed down interface, with less buttons, less panels, less menus) only dedicated to kids (as shown on this thread ).
Rather, I would be pleased to see a workspace that would feature highlighted buttons (or surrounded by a colored rectangle), assistants and tip popups (in that workspace), to guide new users.
IMO, the initial goal of the "101 project" shouldn't be abandoned : helping new users know the basics of 3D modeling and discover the Blender interface without much pain.
One could tell me that new users can (should) read the documentation or watch Youtube tutorials. But even if the Reference Manual and Youtube videos exist, that doesn't mean Blender shouldn't be easier for beginners during their first hours, finding this information in Blender itself (thanks to tips or assistants).
Also, there are people in this world who don't have Internet at home. Sometimes, the only way for them to have access to Internet is thanks to Internet Cafés, and people from these countries often have to pay extra fees to be able to search for information using search engines (these Internet Cafés propose cheaper prices browsing for social medias than for using search engines). And this is not mentioning some Internet Cafés that ask for money to every Mb downloaded (or consumed on Youtube).
What I want to say is that it might be a good idea to help new Blender users, within Blender itself.
Maybe there could be a special workspace for people who are using Blender for the first time, with tips that pop up (but not in an overlapping way, or at least not in the middle of the viewport, if you know what I mean).
Hotkeys overlay
Rather than seeing tips and hotkeys on the Splash Screen, I would prefer more to see an “hotkeys overlay” (showing the most commonly used hotkeys) that could be displayed (for example) at the bottom-left corner of the viewport. This overlay would display default Blender hotkeys but if the user has created a custom keymap preset, of course, those would be displayed instead. There are several add-ons that have this kind of "hotkeys overlay" and it is really appreciated by the users of these add-ons (especially when those have many functionalities). Examples of add-ons that feature such "overlay": [Bezier Utilities ]], https:*youtu.be/8OI8OTVcBY8 , [ https://youtu.be/ADiqhdBF-WY?t=217 | BoxCutter (this one exposes its hotkeys on its add-on tab, in the N panel). Of course, the user can always hide them at will.
Contextual overlay
Ideally, this "overlay" would be contextual and would only show hotkeys that are relevant to the current action in the viewport (instead of showing a list of the most used hotkeys).
Assistants:
From https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/504767/tragic-life-clippy-worlds-most-hated-virtual-assistant:
Clippy was annoying. Period. There must certainly be more subtle ways to help the user without distracting him/her.
Tips were usually displayed in opaque and quite relatively big dialog boxes. In 2000, the default screen resolutions were lower than what we currently use, and these popups/dialog boxes took more screen space, obfuscating a big part of the screen (compared to the space we have today with our large screen resolutions), They were annoying to say the least.
And my previous paragraph about long texts in tips, explanations or in dialog boxes is relevant here: big dialog boxes with long paragraphs bore users.
Adding a few more comments and purposely not rehashing anything I've said earlier, as I realize that I can be a bit... noisy. LOL
Hotkeys Overlay. I've always had an (unpopular) thought that these should be in a separate Editor. Yes, sounds weird, but hear me out. As in you could choose to make a vertical strip on the right-side of Blender for such an area. Drag it out when you want it, make it 20 pixels wide when you don't. Or don't have it all of course. But it would replace the mess that we now see in the statusbar as that has proved to be inadequate for the job. Unsure of what you can do while using Knife or other complex operation? Then open this window because while using knife it would show you, one per line, every single hotkey modifier with proper descriptions. If you are not currently doing anything it could still list all the common shortcuts for the major operations in the currently-active window.
As for "Blender 101" I have always argued that our use of default settings is a little backwards. We tend to set things to what an average user would prefer, where some of these should be set for those initial first hours. It is easy for us to change and modify blender to how we want, so some of the initial settings could be used to inform, teach, and simplify. For example the initial width of Tool should be wide enough to show the names. Easy enough for us to make it narrower, but better to show the extra information initially. And region overlap areas that are are now completely transparent should start with a very small amount of opacity so that the extent of these areas is more clear. And it again leads users to realize that these areas can be made to be more or less transparent. Start File Browser in thumbnails view. Lets get rid of that "Scene" and "View Layers" selector at the top right by allowing better management of those in both Outliner and in Properties. There are lots of things we could do to make the first hours less daunting without it making things harder for anyone else.