Sometimes the underlying processes an application is designed for are too complex to be self-explanatory. Look at e.g. Photoshop, would not work without tutorials.

Photoshop doesn't have overlay help such as this.

I'm not arguing against any help, I'm simply stating that if it's easy enough to explain with an overlay then it's probably possible to make the interface intuitive enough without it.

iPhoto on the ipad has overlays. Same sort of app, focus on usability, on a usability focussed device, but still overlays are needed...

Agreed. There's been a few of these plugins and saas offerings recently, and neither of them feel quite right to me.

thanks, we will make it easier, i don't know, maybe with a wizard? ha

pistoriusp's comment isn't about trip.js, it's about overall design of sites. The goal of a UX engineer is to make things like trip.js obsolete. The design should be clean and self explanatory.

I 100% agree with your comment. That is most definitely the goal of a UX engineer. However it's kind of like striving for perfection, it's impossible. If anything a really good UX engineer shoots for that 100% and fills in the rest with these types of tools. Can anyone here point to a complex webapp that doesn't have some kind of instructions system?