Comments on: “You know what .chms need? More bling-bling. More flash…”

By: Kirsty

Kirsty — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 12:23:38 +0000

I really like the interactive and up-to-date content that can be delivered with web technologies, but with pretty much all of our products, we canot presume our users will have an internet connection of any kind (e.g. mines in Mongolia and Siberia), and some of our governmental users will also be restricted as to what kind of web information they will be able to surf. Of course, you can do a lot with HTML-based formats installed locally, but that’s as much as we can consider for our users right now (bummer).

I also had a colossal fail of a web-based theory tonight. We had some kind of DNS issue with our router, and so no internet connection – all of the links Microsoft gave me to help resolve the issue were on the web … so I had to call my in-house tech support, and he hard-booted the modem (pulled the plug out a couple of times).

By: Kenn

Kenn — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 07:12:20 +0000

Thanks so much for this great post about my site! I really appreciate the time and thought that went into it.

Now, what do I have to do to get you to like dogs?!

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 06:01:51 +0000

Kristi, thanks for the comment. Your project sounds interesting. I know the feeling of doing something that’s significantly complex, only to have the recipient yawn at the details.

Thanks for the tip about Netflix’s help. I’ll definitely check that one out.

About .chm files, I actually don’t use this format much. Didn’t Microsoft change their security restrictions a couple of years ago, making .chm’s difficult to display across networks? I stopped packaging my help with the application code long ago, because I wanted to be able to update my help on the fly (for example, it’s rarely possible to record a sufficient number of video tutorials before a release, but I can usually add them in the few weeks after a release). I put my help on SharePoint and have the developers link to the help file. Because of this, the .chm format never works for me. Even webhelp is still unexciting.

By: Kristi

Kristi — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 14:05:10 +0000

Hi, Tom. Thanks for picking up this topic for your post. I think the visual impression that our help files make can maybe even impact how our projects get prioritized. If a programming manager has to decide how important it is to allocate hours for installing context-sensitive help, I’m guessing that a .chm just doesn’t look that important. I know there’s more to it than that, but still.
I tweeted in a moment of frustration after delivering a draft .chm and alias files to a software architect. Our products are complex, and interface with each other in a network of shared windows and menu options. In order to single-source the associated help, we were pulling topics from two sub-projects into two main projects, then merging the two .chms at runtime so that our conditions wouldn’t fight each other. On top of that, we were setting things up in those projects to be able share common content across all our other projects. We worked weekends and overtime to get it set up and to get the content updated, too, on an aggressive schedule. I think I can speak for most of us and say we were pretty excited about it.
The architect was underwhelmed by our runtime .chm merge. After reading his tepid email, I opened the .chm again, imagining that I was seeing what he sees—a grey frame, hokey toolbar buttons, and hundreds of topics in which we hadn’t enriched the verbiage because no updated functionality was associated with them. For someone who already doesn’t fully get our process, our weeks of work were not evident.
When he spoke to the Orlando STC chapter this fall, Joe Welinske named Netflix help as an example of the places we need to think about going as UA developers. He suggested that the demand will increase for more customized formats and technical skills. Ever since then, I’ve thought of the .chms I’m working on now as training wheels.