Contextual Navigation One of the most hotly debated topics in tech comm deals with how writers should cross reference other topics within a help topic. Some writers feel that including contextual or inline links in your help topics distracts low-literacy readers by encouraging them to navigate elsewhere. The low-literacy readers, they argue, end up bouncing from page to page, following one internal link to the next, without ever completi...
I'm continuing to make my way through James Kalbach's book, Designing Web Navigation. In chapter 2, he says the structure and format of content helps users anticipate the meaning of the content. He writes, The human visual system naturally seeks structure in information, often very rapidly. Scientists refer to this as "pre-attentive" processing. This occurs in such a way that interpretation of a display is determined by the design itself....
In Designing Web Navigation, James Kalbach starts out by asking why we need navigation at all. Technically, it's possible to put all the content on the same page. You can show and hide the content through Javascript or other techniques. Although he doesn't mention it, technical writers are probably familiar with twisties, or drop-down hotspots. You click the link and a lot of text expands below it. You could essentially do this with your ...
A Year of Writing Dangerously: 365 Days of Inspiration and Encouragement Perhaps because of my blog's title, "I'd Rather Be Writing," many people think this blog deals with creative writing. As a result, I frequently get asked if I want to review books about writing. Sometimes I say yes. Recently someone sent me A Year of Writing Dangerously: 365 Days of inspiration and Encouragement, by Barbara Abercrombie. So far I like the book. I'm n...
The first day of Confab, I attended an all-day workshop on Taxonomy, Metadata, and Search by Seth Earley. The workshop had a lot of information, much of it streamed out like a firehose through 200+ slides. In this post, I attempt to make sense of some of these concepts. Seth outlined a three-prong approach to information management: Develop a taxonomy. Apply the taxonomy to your content. Leverage the taxonomy to view your content in diff...
About two years ago, I started a series on findability because it was a topic that interested me. My goal was to write a book on the subject, moving post by post. Although I never have time to write a book, I could fathom sitting down to write a post each evening. I figured that any insightful, in-depth book would require me to write at least 100 posts on the topic. But somehow when I reached 50 posts, I came to a wall and couldn't see be...
I recently received the following question from a reader: Hello. I've read some of your blog articles and they've been very helpful. I'm interested in changing careers and am hoping to pick your brain with a brief couple of questions. First, how do outsiders learn the software that TechComm folks use? I've looked at Adobe's TechComm suite, MadCap Flare and so on, and the costs are enormous. Second, is there some standardized training prog...
User-centered documentation 1.0 Podcast: How to Create User-Centered Documentation, Interview with Joe Sokohl 1.1 → Writing User-Centered Documentation, or, My Best Days as a Technical Writer 1.2 New series: User-centered documentation 1...
My journey to and from wikis 1.0 My Journey To and From Wikis: Why I Adopted Wikis, Why I Veered Away, and a New Model 1.1 The Need for Constant Updates (Wikis) 1.2 Some Wiki Basics (Wikis) 1.3 Community and Collab...
My journey to and from wikis 1.0 My Journey To and From Wikis: Why I Adopted Wikis, Why I Veered Away, and a New Model 1.1 The Need for Constant Updates (Wikis) 1.2 Some Wiki Basics (Wikis) 1.3 Community and Collab...
My journey to and from wikis 1.0 My Journey To and From Wikis: Why I Adopted Wikis, Why I Veered Away, and a New Model 1.1 The Need for Constant Updates (Wikis) 1.2 Some Wiki Basics (Wikis) 1.3 Community and Collab...
My journey to and from wikis 1.0 My Journey To and From Wikis: Why I Adopted Wikis, Why I Veered Away, and a New Model 1.1 The Need for Constant Updates (Wikis) 1.2 Some Wiki Basics (Wikis) 1.3 → Community and Collaboration (Wi...
My journey to and from wikis 1.0 My Journey To and From Wikis: Why I Adopted Wikis, Why I Veered Away, and a New Model 1.1 The Need for Constant Updates (Wikis) 1.2 → Some Wiki Basics (Wikis) 1.3 Community and Collaboration (Wikis) ...
If there's one business buzzword that you hear all over the place, "collaboration" must rank in the top 10. When it comes to technical writing, if we open our arms to collaboration, giving a warm embrace to "collaborative authoring" is only one more little step. It feels so tolerant and embracing to be collaborative. It fits in with Web 2.0 and the trend toward interactivity. In reality, collaborative authoring is little more than a euphe...
My journey to and from wikis 1.0 My Journey To and From Wikis: Why I Adopted Wikis, Why I Veered Away, and a New Model 1.1 → The Need for Constant Updates (Wikis) 1.2 Some Wiki Basics (Wikis) 1.3 Community and Collaboration (Wikis) ...
