Examples of blogs as online help and release notes | just write click.

Today should have been a day of great excitement, almost like a coronation. Having struggled with a 175 page user manual for several months, I finally finished a first draft. Today I met with the client, alongside the senior project manager, the project manager, and a few others to present the sacred document, with the words “Reference Manual” on the front. I say it should … more »

PDF Manuals: The Wrong Paradigm for an Online Experience :: UXmatters

Evaluating Online Help — a Set of Criteria

After a topic title in your help, what do you write? Do you jump straight into the numbered steps, or do you explain why a user would likely perform the topic? Although I practice the latter (adding explanatory text before the steps), I recently read an article by Mike Hughes that convinced me readers rarely read text that appears before a numbered list.

Instructional Text in the User Interface: Some Counterintuitive Implications of User Behaviors :: UXmatters.

Can online help show “read wear?” | just write click.

Have you ever asked your users what kind of training materials they want, or how they prefer to learn software? This kind of information is critical to figuring out what help deliverables to produce. But really when it comes down to it, there are only so many options — printed manuals, short guides, interactive flash guides, videos, online help, live training, reference cards, context-sensitive help, … more »

I used to think drop-down hotspots were the cat’s pajamas, until I realized they’re problematic for single source chunking. Let me elaborate. Drop-down hotspots seem like they’d be all the rage — the ability to compress massive amounts of information into little spaces that are easy to scan. You can get around the bloated TOC that intimidates readers with its endless books that expand and … more »

I’ve been accustomed to writing topic titles as gerunds (for example, “Configuring the Monitor Display” or “Reformatting Your Hard Drive”), followed by specific steps that would begin, “To configure the monitor display…,” or “To reformat your hard drive….” However, when I watched how an actual person used my online help file, I noticed he didn’t use gerunds in his searches. He typed his search like … more »

Many of us want to integrate innovative Web 2.0 practices into our online help. But if we create blogs, wikis, or other interactive features outside the help file, users may never use them. I’ve been using SharePoint 2007 as a file repository for my online help mainly because of the publishing control it gives me. And since I was already using SharePoint as my file … more »

Rob Houser’s recent article in Writers UA, “What’s New in RoboHelp 7?“, is a thorough, insightful article I highly recommend. After reading his review, I thought I’d post a few notes from my experiences with the same. (For more about Rob, see his site.) This past month I’ve been heavily using the RoboHelp 7 and Captivate 3 components of the Technical Communication Suite. RoboHelp 7 … more »

I’ve been rethinking a previous post I wrote about the best response to the remark, “Nobody reads the help anyway. ” A better response is to ask people (at just the right time) to raise their hands if they’ve ever searched a help file. Unless someone is totally unique, most likely everyone has tried using help. When everyone has his or her hand raised to … more »

In this three-minute STC Atlanta podcast, Judy Glick Smith says she’s tired of trying to convince sales people of the value of documentation. She says she’s “tired of fighting the good fight.” No doubt as a technical writer you’ve heard the phrase, “No one reads the help anyway.” They let out a small chuckle to indicate that they’re only kidding, although deep down they’re being … more »

I was reading an article in a previous STC Intercom magazine about how to add a Send Feedback link to your online help project, but the javascript didn’t work. Here’s an alternative method that does work.  This Send Feedback link grabs the page title and URL and includes it in the e-mail that the user sends. The method below describes the integration using RoboHelp, but … more »