RE: choosing help authoring software...more questions

["Lisa Wright" <liwright -at- earthlink -dot- net>]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471156957/qid%3D1021694240/ref%3
Dsr%5F11%5F0%5F1/102-8539840-7894555

Standards for Online Communication
by Joann T. Hackos, Dawn M. Stevens

Yes, it's pub date is 1997. This ancient tome very nicely explains the
different kinds of users and their information needs. It's also the only
book I know of that puts a structure around writing for online help. If
you haven't taken any tech writing classes or don't have much experience
(I didn't see your original post so I've no idea, but I'm guessing that
if you're taking a class next sememster then you don't have much
experience) then I suggest you ground yourself in a paradigm of what
your users are going to need when they open your help files. Then once
you get some more experience and expand your reading you can modify the
paradigm a bit. One of the key things the book should help you do is
organize your information to meet the differing needs of the readers.
Remember: the book is not gospel, it recommends a generalized approach
that you _may_ need to modify to meet your specific needs. But you have
to start somewhere. This may also help you with organizing the multiple
helps for your different applications.

The book is plenty up-to-date for your needs.

You can author your text in any text editor. If you use Word, you'll be
saving it as plain text anyway unless you're importing to RoboHelp. I
like TextPad (it's cheap AND good), or, if you go with Dreamweaver, it
comes with HomeSite.

BTW, I'm just starting down the Dreamweaver/DevaTools path on my current
project and so far I like it. Personally, the way I learned about the
mechanics of creating online help was to get some software and create a
project. There is a book called "Creating Dynamic Help with DHTML" (I
think that's the title) that teaches how to create compiled help. I
don't know if she talked about writing or not because my project changed
technologies and I ended up writing a JavaHelp project (then we changed
again and it became straight HTML!).

Good luck!

Lisa 

-----Original Message-----
On Behalf Of Rosemary J Horner
<snip>
I've also seen recommendations for Dreamweaver/Devahelp and I'm curious
about how that works. Is it the design tool, Devahelp the compiler, and
some other app (Word or something) where you actually write?

Also, Geoff Hart recommended taking a Help Authoring class or reading a
book. I'd love to do both of the above, if I could find such things!! I
am taking a Technical Writing class targeted at Information Technology
students next quarter at the community college, and I've read both of
Michael Bremer's books--The User Manual Manual and Untechnical Writing.
I haven't been able to find any really current books about specifically
writing online help, writing for web-based applications, or using help
authoring tools (apart from Robohelp, which I don't think is what I
need). Any recommendations?
</snip>



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