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Drupal 8 has been all about pushing the boundaries, so why should help content be any different?

With the release of Drupal 8, we will also ship with tools to complement hook_help() entries: if you, the developer, are providing a documentation page for your module, why not also provide an interactive step by step guide on how your module works as well?

The idea of Tour isn’t a new one; it has been maturing over the past two years. It all began after the release of Drupal 7 when we decided to move the help passage from the front page to the help page. This meant that users new to Drupal would not see this text, and would have to struggle through with no guidance.

In light of that issue, the below was suggested;

How about creating a “Welcome” message that pops up in an overlay with that same information that continues to appear until either the user checks a box on the overlay saying to dismiss it or the user creates a piece of content on the site?
- Vegantriathlete, August 10, 2011

With tour.module committed to Drupal 8 core, we now have context-sensitive guided tours for Drupal’s complex interfaces, and developers have a new way to communicate with the user. It doesn’t stop at core either: contrib modules can ship with tours to describe how users can take full advantage of their modules. Distributions can also ship with tours on how to get started. Imagine a tour in the Commerce distribution that took the user through setting up products: That would be amazing! It would enable users to discover the pages they are looking for and take the guesswork out of finding pages.