Lately I’ve been creating context-sensitive help for an online application. As part of my strategy, I’ve been trying to follow Theresa Putkey’s advice in “Usability in Context-Sensitive Help.” In her article, Theresa recommends providing more than just the steps for a specific task in the context-sensitive help window. Instead, she says to show more contextual links, including answers to why, when, and who questions, because … more »

Theresa Putkey explains how to make context-sensitive help more usable. Don’t just present a single task to the user that relates to the page the user is on, but rather present a variety of topics spanning the how, when, why, and other related issues for the page.

The last podcast I recorded, on “Make Your Help Indispensable, Safeguard Your Job,” with Mike Hughes, was so full of good information about how to make your help more valuable and user-friendly that I couldn’t help but write up notes on it. Here’s a list of the ten things I learned from my last podcast: 1. Make your help a mile wide and thirty seconds … more »

Context-sensitive help in Madcap Flare is pretty easy to set up – you just follow the steps in Flare’s context-sensitive help instructions. However, there’s a usability problem that you must work around for the context-sensitive help to be successful. Let me explain. When the user clicks a context-sensitive help link, a help window appears, as it should. But suppose the user doesn’t close the help window, … more »

Recently I switched from using the iRiver I bought two years ago to my wife’s iPod Nano, which she only uses intermittently. I don’t know why I used my iRiver for so long. The iPod is superior in every way, but mostly because it offers convenience. For example, New podcasts download automatically when I merely plug it in to my computer and click Sync. Its … more »

I listened to Alistair Christie’s IT Author podcast the other day online and then later driving home from work. Alistair is based in Scotland and has one of the most enjoyable podcasts on technical communication around. If you listen to podcasts, add his podcast to your feed.  His latest episodes are as follows: In Flare: the good stuff, he explains the features of Flare that … more »