Discussing the article: "MQL5 Trading Tools (Part 9): Developing a First Run User Setup Wizard for Expert Advisors with Scrollable Guide"
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Check out the new article: MQL5 Trading Tools (Part 9): Developing a First Run User Setup Wizard for Expert Advisors with Scrollable Guide.
In this article, we develop an MQL5 First Run User Setup Wizard for Expert Advisors, featuring a scrollable guide with an interactive dashboard, dynamic text formatting, and visual controls like buttons and a checkbox allowing users to navigate instructions and configure trading parameters efficiently. Users of the program get to have insight of what the program is all about and what to do on the first run, more like an orientation model.
A first-run setup guide is a crucial feature for trading programs like Expert Advisors (EAs) in MetaTrader 5, providing step-by-step instructions to configure essential settings such as lot sizes, risk levels, and trading filters, helping traders avoid errors that could lead to losses, such as setting an overly large lot size that risks excessive drawdown. Let's say it is more like an orientation that introduces new users to the program schematics and capabilities. Its value lies in simplifying the onboarding process for traders of all experience levels, ensuring proper program setup from the start, and utilizing a mechanism to remember if the guide has been shown, thereby preventing unnecessary prompts during future initializations to optimize the user experience, especially for traders who repeatedly attach programs to charts.
Our approach is to design an intuitive, scrollable dashboard that displays a clear setup guide with visually distinct text (such as highlighted headings and clickable links for support), interactive buttons for user actions, and a checkbox to let traders choose whether to skip the guide in future runs. We will leverage the MQL5 global variable capability to store the user choice in a variable that saves and recalls the trading terminal build number (the software version) and operating system (OS) where the program is first run. We will create a centered interface with a header, body, and footer, incorporating dynamic text formatting for readability, scrollable content for comprehensive instructions, and adaptive sizing to fit different screen resolutions. This ensures traders can easily follow steps such as setting risk parameters or enabling AutoTrading, making the setup process seamless and efficient. We will follow the in-built structure for the 'One Click Trading' setup guide as follows.
Author: Allan Munene Mutiiria