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Subject:RE: Indexing gui elements From:Scott_Wagner -at- DSTInnovis -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 18 Dec 2003 18:26:18 -0800
France wrote:
"Personnally, I think it's weird to index every gui element.
However, after discussing with some doc users, I found out that many of
them actually look for the button name when they do not know what it does,
they do not look for the interface name. I tried to argue my point, but
even if I still find it crazy, I have to admit that if that's what users
need, I should just do it. I'm not there yet, but it's on my todo list
now, should be done within a few months."
_____________________
The question is HOW do they look up those GUI elements? We conducted a
survey and of the 29 internal customer who responded, only 6 of them said
they turn to the index to look up field names (our equivalent of GUI
elements). Most of the rest used the Find tool (Ctrl + F) or navigated to
the screen the field is on by some other means. This was a survey to find
out how our frontline support people use our PDF documentation, but I
think the answers would be the same were we talking about help systems.
The conclusion we came to is that although a minority of users may look in
the index for field names (or GUI elements), since there are other ways to
locate the information it isn't a good use of our time to continue
indexing them.
And if you're wondering, I work in the same group as the woman who posted
the question, and the decision I just mentioned occurred today and in
large part as a result of the responses we got back from folks on this
list and the FrameUsers list.
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