7 Ways to Increase Flare's Search Engine Optimization in Google's Results

I've noticed a trend in search results lately. Users are searching for my help products and landing on our technology blog that has articles about the topic rather than landing on the help material for the product. For example, a user might have an issue with "newsletter," so he or she searches for newsletter and lands on the beta testing announcement for newsletter that I wrote for our technology blog months ago. The help for newsletter ...

Knowledge Has a New Shape, and It's Not the Book

http://www.toobigtoknow.com/ One of the most interesting chapters in Too Big To Know is David Weinberger's discussion of long and short form content. I found the chapter particularly relevant because just the other day, I published a 3,700 word post and had a reader comment that the length — for a blog post — was heinous. I'm not saying the commenter was out of place to object to such length online, since I too sigh at long posts, but he...

Podcast: Include It All, Filter It Afterwards -- Interview with Mark Baker

Listen here: In this podcast, I talk with Mark Baker from Every Page Is Page One about the ideas he discussed in his Lavacon presentation: Include It All, Filter It Afterwards. This is a line from David Weinberger's book Too Big To Know, which explores the way that knowledge is taking the shape of a network rather than the traditional book. The podcast is about 45 minutes long. Similar to other podcasts, the format work...

The Rebirth of My Podcast

I'm going to experiment with some new podcasts, but I want to try something different. The other day I was listening to Boagworld on the way to work, because I think Paul Boag is one of the most successful and longstanding podcasters. He starts out with some playful cohost banter, followed by a few news items that he discusses with his cohosts, and then gets into some techniques and principles for web design, and then usually interviews s...

My Upcoming Presentations at User Assistance Europe in Manchester, England

This year I'll be traveling to Manchester, England to the User Assistance Europe conference there and presenting the following: Make Your Content More Findable When Users Browse and Search Users tend to search help material when they have a specific question they're looking to answer. In contrast, users tend to browse help material when they don't know exactly what they're looking for. Browsing often leads to better searching, and more s...

A Few Notes from Too Big To Know

http://www.toobigtoknow.com/ After my last post, I thought I should start reading Weinberger's Too Big to Know. I liked his previous book, Everything Is Miscellaneous, and so far this one is engaging too. In Too Big to Know, Weinberger talks a lot about knowledge, and how the Internet changes what we know. He says that if the scope of our group is large enough, as is the case with the Internet, there's usually someone out there with the ...

What Does "Every Page Is Page One" and "Include It All, Filter It Afterward" Mean?

One of the more memorable presentations I attended at Lavacon in Portland was Mark Baker's "Include It All, Filter It Afterward" presentation. You can view the slides from his presentation here. I also embedded them from Slideshare below. Include it all. Filter it afterward. from mbakeranalecta Because I liked the presentation so much, I want to explore the ideas a bit more, as well as integrate the discussion into my ongoing theme abo...

Five Ways to Avoid the "Congratulations" Cliche as You Start a User's Guide

It seems that the manual for almost every product I buy starts off by congratulating me for having purchased the product. I recently bought a waterproof iPod shuffle to listen to audio books while I swim, and since I couldn't figure out how to switch playlists on the device, I turned to the manual. Here's how I'm greeted: Another congratulations cliche "Congratulations on purchasing your iPod shuffle." Have you seen this congratulations ...

Book Review: Your Brain at Work, by David Rock

I recently listened to Your Brain at Work, a productivity/neuroscience book by David Rock. Rock's main argument is that by better understanding your brain, you can align the way you work with your brain's tendencies, patterns, and instincts to be more productive and successful. Rock keeps your attention throughout by implementing  a narrative conceit involving two people, Paul and Emily, in before-and-after scenarios. Paul and Emily make ...

Incorporating Learning into Tech Comm Deliverables

I recently attended an internal conference at my work for instructional designers. The focus of the conference (as I assume the focus is for many instructional design conferences) was on "learning." I always find the emphasis on learning in the ID crowd fascinating, because this is rarely a word that tech writers use, yet our goals are largely the same. An action-based model for learning The keynote speaker presented a model for learning...

Implementing Highlighting in Madcap Flare's HTML5 Output

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 to incorporate but does require a few steps. (Make sure you chan...

Creating Video Tutorials for Android and iPhone Mobile Apps

In a recent webinar on writing scripts for video tutorials that I gave to the STC Tech Editing group for the STC last week, someone asked how to create screencasts for mobile apps. I thought it would be a good idea to respond in more detail in a blog post. Most likely your apps are designed for iPhones and Android smartphones. (I don't have experience creating screencasts for other types of phones, but I can give some general guidance.) A...

Exploring Flare's Mobile Webhelp Format in Depth

I've recently been exploring Madcap Flare's Mobile Webhelp format. Madcap introduced this new format in version 7, so it's not a new feature (Flare is now on version 8). Nevertheless, I haven't used this format much much partly because I haven't had any mobile projects until now, and because mobile documentation is still so young. A Standalone Help File? The first question to ask is, should mobile help be packaged in its own file rather t...

Retina Display and Screen Capture Sizes in Online Help

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 including screen captures in online help files? In short, use larger images and scale them down in the brow...

10 Realizations While Writing Documentation for a Mobile App

For the past couple of weeks, I've been working on documentation for a mobile app. This is the first time I've documented a mobile app, so it's no surprise that I realized a few new things. 1. It's hard for users to switch between help and the app. My preference in publishing help material is to give developers a URL that points to a server where I can FTP my help files at will. This lets me retain control of my help material without bein...