I like what's been done so far. My day job is actually for a publisher selling computer help for beginners, so thought I'd share a few things we've learnt:
* Address people personally, and try to make them feel included. This is why {{helpme}} is a great invention.
* Bullet points are useful, but prose is engaging too. If you make prose interesting and relevant, believe it or not people *will read it*, even if it's relatively long.
* Screenshots (especially labelled ones) are great for newbies. It's remarkably easy to overlook parts of the interface.
* Videos are even better, plus they can have a more personal touch :-)
* Easily readable text is more important than fancy design. That usually means black, and of a reasonable size. Too many bluelinks in a passage make it harder to read, and can be distracting. Short line lengths are nice too.
And thoughts on what we've got so far:
* Redesign: Seems pretty good, improves on the original which itself has already had quite a lot of work.
* Polish version: Not sure it's a huge help really, throwing them into creating a userpage without much guidance. If this is used it might be a good idea to prefill the edit page a bit to help them.
* Options: To be honest I found it rather confusing. Some boxes to separate the options better would be nice.
* Video1: This is nice, good to see something a bit different.
* Easy steps: I definitely prefer this to the Options one
* Bookshelf: The idea of having a book intro is great, and it provides the opportunity to do some really nice design. But there are parts of the text in this which are almost unreadable.
* mod2 (FT2's version): The overall design is nice, and it's laid out logically. I'd fix the header colours though.
* Video walkthrough: I think this is my favourite. Good job Sage.
Anyway I'll have a crack at making my own version tonight.
Pete / the wub