Re: Release Notes

["Dana Worley" <dana -at- campbellsci -dot- com>]

In the help file and the manual we have a "What's new" topic that 
briefly indicates the new features of the software.

However, our "release notes" are contained in a readme.txt file. It 
succinctly states what bug fixes and enhancements were made and 
known issues for each module in the software. There are no screen 
shots -- it is a text file. 

The average user should be just fine with a "What's new" section. 
Only your "power users" care anything about the *real* release 
notes, and IMO, a Notepad readable file is just fine for them (note: 
most users aren't too lazy to read the notes, it's just not important to 
them). 

Something we have just started is using this text file to populate a 
data base. This database is searchable from our web site. You can 
look at all the changes made in a version, or you can enter a search 
term and see what changes have been made to that feature across 
one or more versions. We haven't gotten much feedback on this yet 
to know whether or not it is useful to our customers, but I assume it 
is (at least to the "power users" :)

As always, YMMV :)

Dana W.

On Wednesday, August 22, 2007, Zen C wrote: 
 
> Any suggestions on this comment ? Do release notes usually go out with a lot
> of details or is a brief outline of what is changed only?
***************************
Dana Worley
Software Product Manager/Manager, Software Support Group
Campbell Scientific, Inc. 
Microsoft MVP, Windows Help


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