RE: Future of documentation in Web-based apps
Glenn Maxey wrote:
Scott,
I don't think that screen size will be relevant (12" or 35") for
desktop/laptop monitors, because the developers of web-based
applications will tightly control the layout of the page, the position
of application controls relative to one another, and the size of the
initial browser window. Users resizing the window probably won't affect
the layout of fake-buttons and other controls in the application 2/3,
although it would affect the word-wrap in the documentation 1/3.
I am glad you have that kind of faith in the developers of future web pages. Based on personal experience, I have found some web-based applications that use extremely small font sizes, bad color combination for background and font, etc.
I realize that bad design doesn't necessarily follow through all applications. I simply hate to have the possibility of reduced usable real estate with the combination of bad design forced on me because the perceived cost by the manufacturer is less than printed documentation.
I refuse to purchase software that does not have a manual. Call me old fashioned, but even a PDF file, while better than nothing, still does not completely fill the void. On-line documentation appears to me to be more and more a buzz word. A vaguely defined item that promises to fill every expectation, accomplishes much less than that, and produces its own problems, which appear to be ignored by most manufacturers.
I don't want the explanation to obscure what I am attempting to do on screen. I really don't want to have to fight small font size and poor leading to read a text dense help file. I don't want to read super-sized fonts with too much leading, producing loss of context as I have to scroll multiple times to read a single paragraph.
I find reading comprehension to be reduced when I read from a screen, as opposed to reading from a page.
I simply find more problems using eletronic means to read than I do using paper.
For small, concise, help systems, I find less difficulty.
Do you remember Microsoft Word before it migrated to a GUI?
The program used 1/3 of the screen to display the commands, and 2/3s to display what you were doing. That was one reason that WordPerfect had more market share than Word in the command line interface environment. When Word migrated to a GUI, the user suddenly had 9/10s of the screen to work in. The Apple OS and WIndows GUIs catapulted Word into the number one word processor spot.
Just my opinion, but I hope it is reasonably.
Scott
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RE: Future of documentation in Web-based apps: From: Glenn Maxey
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