My colleague Ben Minson wrote a post about why tripane help is a relic of the book-paradigm documentation age, and how it can limit us from taking advantage of other web technologies. See Why I Don't Like Tri-pane Help. As a quick definition, tripane help is the standard webhelp HTML output that has several frames -- the table of contents pane on the left, the main topic area in the middle, and a pane across the top. For example, here's a...
Listen here: Visual Composing: Document Design for Print and Digital Media Recently Jo Mackiewicz (Auburn University) and Kathryn Riley (Illinois Institute of Technology) published Visual Composing: Document Design for Print and Digital Media with Pearson. This book covers the visual side of document design, including all the design decisions from the font you use to the colors you choose to the tables, column widths, im...
I was talking to a colleague today about wikis when he mentioned Google, and how Google has such a brilliantly simple solution that allows users to find content. With Google, there's a search box. The users type keywords they want information about, and most of the time Google returns brilliantly relevant results. While some credit is certainly due to Google's Pagerank algorithm, what enables findability in Google is that there's so much ...
So many different ways to go. It's been a couple of weeks since I posted about my team's search for an enterprise authoring strategy. So far, we're just as split as ever about the problem. It seems that you can go four separate routes: DITA, HAT, Web, or Wiki. Here are some of the paths and difficulties we're encountering. DITA DITA has traction as a new standard format for help authoring, but the DITA Open Toolkit output isn't attractive...
Listen here: Alan Houser I recently interviewed Alan Houser, candidate for STC vice president, in a podcast about his perspectives and plans for the STC. Both Alan and Vici Koster-Lenhardt are running for this position. I asked each of them the following five questions: What's one of the greatest challenge STC members face right now. Any solutions? What would you like to see differently in the STC? Local chapters strugg...
Listen here: Victoria Koster-Lenhardt In this podcast, I talk with Victoria Koster-Lenhardt, candidate for STC vice president, about her perspectives and plans for the STC. Both Alan and Victoria Koster-Lenhardt are running for STC vice president. I asked Victoria following five questions: What's one of the greatest challenge STC members face right now. Any solutions? What would you like to see differently in the STC? L...
Ben Minson and me at the last STC Summit Have you noticed how many good conferences are scheduled lately? I remember a couple of years ago, when Doc Train conferences ended, and some of us thought the STC Summit was approaching its last time -- I thought conferences would become extinct. Today there are almost too many conferences. Here are some of the interesting looking conferences taking place within the next couple of months: SXSW In...
In The Big Shift from Search to Social, Anne Gentle notes the growing problem with Google's search and trends towards alternative search sources, such as social networks like Facebook. She links to an stirring NY Times article called The Dirty Little Secrets of Search, which I recommend reading. The Dirty Little Secrets About Search, from the NYTimes The NYTimes article exposes how search engines are gamed, and how search engines can als...
Recently I've been playing more of a blogger role at my job, doing more user awareness than user education. This will only increase during the coming months, and if I do a good job, I might finally show the importance of this neglected role. Part of the reason we're doing more user awareness is because we've suddenly published dozens of new websites, tools, and other technical solutions, and we're trying to help the general membership com...
My wife wants to finish our basement so badly that she registered for a local eight-week course on how to finish your basement. As the first class approached, she realized how difficult it would be for me to nurse the baby while she learned about framing, plumbing, electricity, and so forth. So I agreed to go instead. I had been putting off finishing my basement for a long time -- two years now -- because it's costly and I never seem to h...
I have three WordPress tip videos for you today. Alternatives to Akismet for Blocking Spam Akismet, the plugin that blocks spam and is included in WordPress by default, is not really free if you have any kind of advertising, product or service, or high traffic. In this video, I show you a free alternative: antispambee. Headway -- A WordPress Theme with Design Software One of the interesting WordPress themes out there is He...
In my organization, we're in the middle of trying to come up with a solution to address enterprise-wide help authoring. Currently we have a lot of pocket groups of writers working in silos. We think an enterprise-wide solution that unifies help authoring would be a step forward. Siloed help authoring (left) versus a unified help authoring strategy (right). How do you make this shift? I would love if it someone could recommend a solution. ...
We're powerful as consumers, lame as employees. Kai Weber posted an interesting idea from Geoffrey Moore called the Big Disconnect. The gist of the idea is this: How can it be that I am so powerful as a consumer and so lame as an employee? (See How can you exploit the Big Disconnect.) This idea rings true to me, as I think it often does when you start out as a consumer of a product and then transition to an employee of the company produ...
In this post I'm putting together a more formal help strategy. In a previous post, I started to explain my approach to help authoring. I'm trying to flesh this out into a more developed and detailed -- but not too long -- statement about how I do help. This information would be useful both to project managers as well as other writers I work with. I would appreciate any feedback. Help Strategies Because users have different skill levels a...
Internet users have grown accustomed to free content. But this is not without its problems. Jeff Chandler used to produce a Weekly WordPress podcast. His last podcast, "I tried," is dated back in December. It's a long, tired explanation about the difficulties of pouring so much energy into an endeavor that has no substantial financial return. As he moves toward marriage and maintains a full-time job, the amount of free time he can devote ...
