After my post on Organizing Page-Level Content, a couple of people asked me about the usability of collapsible sections, also known as content toggles or dropdown hotspots. These are sections that are collapsed upon initial display and then expand when clicked. Here’s an example: [toggle title_open=”Read this content” title_closed=”Read this content” hide=”yes” border=”yes” style=”default” excerpt_length=”0″ Continue Reading »
The other week my colleague asked me to write down a few notes about how I handle images with Flare. I realized there’s a lot to know about images, especially when trying to single source them both to print and online outputs. In this post, I’ll jot down a few of the more tricky points Continue Reading »
I recently received a comment from a reader who sent me a wish list for technical writing tools. Sam from Canada writes, Hi Tom, I’ve been enjoying your posts along with Mark Baker’s. You both have good points about technical writing trends. I could be totally wrong, but maybe it’s not the tech writers that are resisting Continue Reading »
If you’ve ever been frustrated by the lack of keyword highlighting in Flare’s HTML5 output, check out the script Scott DeLoach created for this. It works pretty well. Details for the HTML5 Highlighter are on Scott’s site: http://www.clickstart.net/highlighter/. I created a quick video tutorial showing how to actually incorporate the highlighter in Flare. It’s not difficult Continue Reading »
If you have an iPhone, iPad, or other device with a retina display, you probably noticed that images appear crisper than on your regular computer monitor. The retina display significantly increases the number of pixels per inch that fit on the screen, increasing the resolution of the images. What does this mean for technical writers Continue Reading »
Below are a few messages from my blog’s sponsors. Check them out and see if any interest you. Many of them have upcoming webinars. News from Madcap MadCap Software is pleased to present free live webinars from industry experts covering a variety of topics essential for today’s technical writers. Sign up today to advance your Continue Reading »
Students and others trying to break into technical writing are always wondering what tools they should use. The latest tools survey from WritersUA seems helpful in answering this question. The survey concludes that some of the most popular tools for technical writers are Adobe Acrobat, Camtasia Studio, Adobe Captivate, Dreamweaver, Madcap Flare, Framemaker, Photoshop, Robohelp, Continue Reading »
Each technical communication conference I attend, one of the activities that attendees look forward to is strolling through the exhibit hall, perusing the various tech comm booths, picking up freebies and fliers, listening to vendor pitches, and generally taking in the tech comm world of products. With that in mind, and as an opportunity to Continue Reading »
In my previous post, I introduced faceted classification and faceted navigation as alternative methods for organizing help content. In contrast to topic-based hierarchies, faceted navigation provides multiple paths into the same content. These multiple paths increase the likelihood that users find the right content. Peter Morville and Jeffery Callendar, two information architects, call faceted navigation “arguably the most significant search Continue Reading »
In this videocast, I talk with Neil Perlin at hyperword.com about the trend toward mobile outputs for help and other information deliverables. Neil had just given a demonstration of a mobile output from Flare, and he mentioned to me that mobile was a direction he wants to specialize in. We recorded this video in the Continue Reading »