# Ideas and Discussion: What Features Do You Want in openHAB 5.0? **URL:** \ **Category:** Features\ **Created:** [November 30, 2024, 1:44pm UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/ideas-and-discussion-what-features-do-you-want-in-openhab-5-0/160573 "2024-11-30T13:44:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 214
**Author:** ![Nadahar](https://community.openhab.org/user_avatar/community.openhab.org/nadahar/32/194556_2.png) [@Nadahar](https://community.openhab.org/u/Nadahar)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2024, 5:30am UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/ideas-and-discussion-what-features-do-you-want-in-openhab-5-0/160573/214 "2024-12-13T05:30:40Z")
> [@JustinG](#): > > Part of the problem here is that, of course, intuitive is a subjective experience. For my part, when I moved from OH2 to OH3, I had little javascript experience, knew less about Vue, had never even heard of Framework-7, and was at least 10 years out-of-date on my css. The moment I went through the posts Yannick was producing about the new OH3 custom widget system, something about the way it was put together made nearly perfect sense to me from the start which, in turn, made it much easier for me to pick up those pieces I was missing. I agree that “intuitive” is very subjective, because it depends on the person’s previous knowledge, experience, habits and to some extent probably also personality. So, while there is no such thing as “universally intuitive”, I’d say that there is something pretty close to universally unintuitive. So, there is some order in the madness, up to a point at least. For me, intuitive doesn’t mean that I instantly know how to use something, but that there’s consistency and a “red thread” that I understand after having struggled with it for a little bit. If I never “see the system”, never know where I should probably look for this or how I should probably do that, I deem it unintuitive. Consistency is more important than the solution itself, as I see it, but this consistency must be on a “concept level”. By that I mean that if one thing is solved one way, and there’s a somewhat similar thing, it should be solved in a similar way - so that a user can guesstimate how to do a task he/she has never done before. I don’t think you can ever get to a point where the average user have experience with JavaScript, CSS, HTML or the various frameworks. I know close to nothing about Vue and Framework-7, except that I read that they were abandoning their desktop support and were going to focus exclusively on mobile. Not a good development in my view, and it completely shuts down any interest in learning more about it. When it comes to JavaScript, I dislike it because it’s so messy, because of the missing type system - basically because it’s a mess. CSS is also a mess, with different things supported by different browsers and browser versions. You can’t really keep current with stuff like this without working with it on a more or less daily basis. It’s just too inconsistent. This makes me “unwilling” to learn more than I absolutely need to solve a certain task with these tools. And, as soon as that task is done, I forget it, because I simply “can’t afford” to remember things that probably won’t be correct the next time I need them anyway. I don’t know how others do similar considerations, but we all have to choose what we want to keep in our head - the storage space _is_ limited. Because of this, I doubt that most people will ever choose to keep enough knowledge about these things to really be able to efficiently navigate it, unless they are involved in this in some other way (work etc.). That doesn’t mean that people can’t learn how to use a CSS property to change color, that doesn’t require “learning CSS”. But, most users will never know enough about CSS layouts, hierarchy etc. to “master” those things. They will probably need examples/samples that they can tweak. > [@JustinG](#): > > Understanding is a much better goal. So how do we speed up getting a new user from 0 to understanding? How do we make it easier for new users to learn? How do we make it easier for experienced users to translate their experience from old version to new? I think the clue is to have a system that “works” for people with different levels of knowledge. If you have to acquire a lot of knowledge before you can do anything, most will give up. If you can do basic things with basic knowledge, and then study whatever parts that you want to be able to do more with further, I think you have a system that “invites people to learn”. But, translating that into an actual implementation might not always be so easy. You can get some way with sane default and the ability to override when needed. But, it _is_ hard to do both, without doubt. At the same time, one thing is certain: Those that are scared away because they can’t acquire enough knowledge to achieve anything, will _never_ learn the system. > [@JustinG](#): > > This is a great example. I added that help feature after the last one of these wish list topics and when I did there was some discussion of how intrusive to make it. Because one of the things to remember is that UX is a very complex optimization problem. There is not just the `Intuitive` ↔ `Arcane` axis to consider. How about the `Helpful to novice` ↔ `Not irritating to experienced users` axis? I don’t know about you, but I _despise_ those startup windows so many programs have with “helpful” tips when I just want to get to my main window, thank you very much. I angrily click the “Never waste my time with this useless nonsense again” option as soon as I have the opportunity I must accept a considerable part of the “blame” for not discovering this. The reason I never saw it was that I never looked for it. The reason for this is that I didn’t expect that anything had changed since I first saw OH3 - because the UI looks similar. When you “think you know what you’re looking at”, you often won’t notice the details. It’s one of those things we do to save time and effort. But I agree that it can be a difficult balance. Forced wizards are _definitely not_ the answer, they should be banned globally. Ideally the information should be available, at your fingertips, when you need it - but not get in the way when you don’t need it. This is why I love mouseover tooltips - except that it’s annoying that the often disappear after a certain time. Eclipse has gotten that right - if you click the tooltip, it will stay until you close it. But, tooltips doesn’t work with touch, which is probably why it’s been in so much decline. I still think it’s the best way I’ve found. That said, one could probably place small buttons/symbols “everywhere” that you could click to get a similar popup. But, it would be a lot of work, and it would have to “integrate” with the “larger documentation” so that concepts and structure weren’t explain in the “tooltips”, but were refereced/linked to. Whatever technical/practical solution is used, I think the “ideal documentation” is easily accessible when and where you need it, but doesn’t get in your way. --- _[View the full topic](https://community.openhab.org/t/ideas-and-discussion-what-features-do-you-want-in-openhab-5-0/160573)._