My idea was to introduce something like context help in phpMyAdmin. I'd also add those ? icons to the interface, but instead of
jumping to an
anchor in the documentation I'd prefer to display a short
(maybe even
localized) text in a JS window that tells the user more a
bout a specific interface
element. I'd also offer this context help for popular error messages
i.e. if the
MySQL server refuses the username / password.
I definitely support this idea of context help, using the /lang files.
well i would use javascript if possible as well, but do you mean just using an alert()? i'd rather open a new window each time the user clicks on the ? instead of sending all the strings with the page when he opens it so i can just display them as a message. because otherwise we'd really have to write _very_ short helptext or we would be sending a lot of helptext data which only few users will ever see.
which is also why i wouldn't put them in the normal lang files - these get included on every page, so with every page we'd be putting every available shorthelp for all pages ....