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Re: Should writers develop their own illustrations?
Subject:Re: Should writers develop their own illustrations? From:John Posada <jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 4 Jan 2001 16:07:41 -0800 (PST)
The process of defining the UI with the customer might entail a
number of modifications. A number of times, the user sat next to me
as they asked that a box be made bigger or wider, that the font be
changed, that the row of buttons be changed from horizontal to
vertical, that a field be added, removed, changed, that a dropdown
list be modified, that a logo be added to the screen...you name it,
they asked for it.
I cannot even imagine most of those changes in VB being as easy as
grabbing a corner and dragging, dragging an element from a palette,
highlighting text and changing the font size, dragging elements
around the screen.
Besides...for our department, with what we did and what we knew, this
simply worked best. I responded to how a message about a technical
writer being involved in the design. I didn't respond to a message
about the most efficient way to develop a front end.
So...what you are teling me is that is is faster to design an element
in VB than drag an element from one end of a screen to another?
Jeezz...now I REALLY can't understand why so many software
programmers miss deadlines...drag and drop code from a pallet...who
woulda thought it.
--- Mike Starr <writstar -at- wi -dot- net> wrote:
> John Posada jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com said...
> > Since most of the times I'm documenting windows software, I found
> > that Visio is excellent for creating mockups of UIs. There are a
> > set of windows elemenmts that allow you to create the interface
> > that the user would see in the application, before any code is
> > developed
> > (screens, dialogs, message boxes, you name it.
> Seems to me to be counterproductive to develop the mockups in Visio
> then the developers have to repeat the task. I've developed the
> mockups in the past using Visual Basic, then passed the files
> right over to the development team and they've been able to add
> all the "under the hood" programming without having to repeat
> the steps for creating the UI.
> One of the fringe benefits of that approach is that the
> developer's poor spelling doesn't become an issue.
=====
John Posada, Senior Technical Writer
"How to be happy in life: Never impose your beliefs
on anyone else and never fry bacon in the nude."
-- Anon mailto:john -at- tdandw -dot- com, 732-259-2874
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