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Jacquelyn Hedden reports: <<I'm ... getting screenshots and (nonfunctional)
screens from Development. The screens were designed specifically for a
client who demanded that they display at 1600 X 1200. There are so many
fields on each screen (these are entry screens) that for some screens, the
user actually has to scroll down to get to the
next half of the screen to enter more information! ... The biggest problem
I'm having is that these screens are so wide that they fit outside the
margins I've defined for my text space.>>
First off, start by defining the purpose of each screen shot.
Simplistically, there are only two: First, a screenshot may display an
overview of where all the parts of the screen lie and the relationships
between these parts, with the details of each part suppressed because
they're too small to see. Second, the screenshot may focus in on a specific
part of the screen so you can discuss its characteristics in detail. (There
may be other purposes, but the distinction between contextual overviews and
specific details covers most situations that concern us as writers.) That
being the case, you can shrink the full-screen image into illegibility
provided that the major navigational features remain legible, and focus in
on (or even enlarge) the fine details by cropping the full-size image to
show only the parts that you're directly discussing. In some cases, you can
combine these approaches: produce a layered illustration in which the
full-screen image lies beneath a "call out" that shows a magnified (and thus
legible) image of only a small part of the screen, just as if the reader
were holding a magnifying glass over the bottom layer. The principle is
reasonably simple: use the full-screen shot to show people where to go, and
the cropped image to tell them what to do once they get there.
One other note: If you're working in Acrobat, it might be worthwhile
including a full-screen, full-resolution version of certain images as a
hyperlinked destination: when readers really do need to see the full image,
they can jump to that hyperlink and zoom in as much as required until the
details become clear. But that's not an elegant solution, since it takes the
reader away from their current task (looking at what you're describing in
the accompanying text) and forces them into another task (finding a small
portion of the screen within a larger image). Ideally, we should do that
work for them so that they never have to worry about it.
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A landmark hotel, one of America's most beautiful cities, and
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IPCC 01, Oct. 24-27 in Santa Fe. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
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