TMG-L Archives

Archiver > TMG > 2010-09 > 1285784402


From: Rick Van Dusen <>
Subject: Re: [TMG] Beginner Mode
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 11:20:02 -0700
References: <2010928232750.473417@Terry> <4CA2B487.8010509@gmail.com> <007901cb5fd7$6ef49080$4cddb180$@net> <4CA35EBD.8010604@gmail.com><009501cb5ff8$e880bbb0$b9823310$@net>
In-Reply-To: <009501cb5ff8$e880bbb0$b9823310$@net>


This is what I'm talking about. When you first touched TMG, you were a
true veteran already. And you've been at TMG for quite some time, and
here you are asking questions still. Why? Because you still haven't
mastered every single type of data, and/or you're refining your entries
of the past. NOT because the program is so hard to use that you still
haven't figured it out.

Now of course, not many of us started out on Unix or paid hundreds of
dollars for a genealogy program, or for that matter, started with
strictly command line (e.g. DOS). We have, I believe, a lot of users in
this list (and in TMG) who have come later to TMG, and to computers, who
have never used any OS but Windows or Mac, or any version of TMG before
7, or maybe 6.

Yet even these folks didn't come to TMG asking, "What's NARA?" or "How
do I start my computer? And what's 'boot' mean?"

And again, we have two issues we've tended to intermingle to our confusion:

1. How to get TMG to do what we want (which, I assert is really, how to
input our data in the best manner, rather than how to work TMG).

2. Getting past/around arcane and/or "non-Windows" ways that TMG
interacts with the user.

There was a post a while back suggesting that the Add Person Type dialog
could have the Unrelated choices there, instead of going to yet another
dialog. This is an example of the second issue.

We've been discussing the first issue.

From the traffic on this list and comments at the local users' group, I
observe that a few are a little frustrated with some type 2 issues, but
nearly all users face repeated "learning opportunities" trying to figure
out the best way to enter data. I really don't see too many users
struggling to figure out how to work the program.

So my end goal in raising this question in the first place is to help us
to come to a more clear view of what TMG needs done to improve it and
what is inherent to TMG that can't and doesn't need to be changed. Along
the way, I've questioned the place and purpose of a "Beginner Mode" in
this inherently advanced-users program.




Teresa Elliott wrote:
> Not really, I guess it depends on the Beginner. Let me use me as an example.
> <G>

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