"Help" messages that are only shown once are not so helphul.

Some software and websites have help pop-ups and tooltips that are only displayed on the first use and then never again. There is no option to show it again.

That is a terrible idea, because the user might want to see it again as a reminder.

Showing something to the user only once means expecting the user to memorize it all at once.

One of the reasons why I hate "help popups":
At the time that they pop up, you don’t need them and they are just annoying. And at the time that you need them, they don’t pop up.

It’s much better to focus on better UI/UX instead of mindlessly throwing help popups everywhere.

Unfortunately, pop-ups are the easiest "feature" users, especially users going up the food chain (mgrs, VPs, etc), feel empowered to include.

Our primary product mgmt app (monolith C#/WPF) is full of "You updated the price" type pop-ups when users click various buttons. Change requests usually come in form of:

- User screws up

- Mgr yells at user

- User blames "the system" for not warning him of his mistake

- Mgr demands "the system" to notify (via a pop-up message) the user they just did the 'thing' so the problem never happens again.

- Because it's 30 seconds of effort and not worth getting into a shouting match, dev puts in the MessageDialog pop-up in the click event.

@Lensflare or even better, if you need them, they pop up, and when you start reading them, they dissapear

@thebiochemic that’s the help messages in loading screens. The pinnacle of UI ingenuity.

"The app loads too fast. I can't read the messages! Make the app load more slowly!"

@thebiochemic btw that’s exactly what the web version of Netflix does:
You start reading the description of the movie and after a couple of seconds, when the preview clip has finished loading, the description just disappears.

I’m baffled every time when I see this, considering how many users are affected by this.

I recommend implementing clippyjs. The king of help

Most of my efficiency with visual studio came from the Did you know? tips back in the day😜

@horus Thank you for the kind suggestion. Good idea, but I doubt many people would even find the book.