RE: Best practices for online help book landing pages?

["Chinell, David F (GE EntSol, Security)" <David -dot- Chinell -at- GE -dot- com>]

All our software products run on Windows XP. We make the TOC pane look
as much like the Windows Explorer navigation pane as possible, so that
the user already has a working model of what will happen in the TOC
pane. (I mean the Explorer bar you see when you click View > Explorer
Bar > Folders.)

In other words, books are just like folders. They hold a collection of
topic documents, but aside from their names (as seen in the TOC pane)
they have no other content or information.

I use open and closed folder icons rather than the default book icons
that some HATTs provide. I require a double-click to open or close the
folder. For RoboHelp HTML Help, I include "Plus/Minus Squares," "Lines
from Root," and "Lines Between Items."

All that more-or-less arises from the strategy of building on the
reader's existing experiences and skills to make Help more familiar in
operation.

There's another strategy I've used in the past, which is to parallel the
behavior of a printed manual. Here, the books are analogous to chapters,
so clicking the book icon opens whatever you'd normally put on a chapter
title page. That's where the topic with the repeated summary of topics
appears -- the analog of a chapter TOC.

But an online "chapter page" seemed kind of out of place in practice, so
I abandoned it.

Bear


-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+david -dot- chinell=ge -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+david -dot- chinell=ge -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of McLauchlan, Kevin
Sent: Friday, October 03, 2008 3:37 PM
To: Tom Johnson; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: RE: Best practices for online help book landing pages?



> -----Original Message-----
Tom Johnson wondered:
> 
> Is there a best practice for what should appear when a user clicks a
book
> in
> an online help table of contents? (By book I'm referring to the TOC
folder
> icon that expands to show multiple topics below it.) I've seen three
> variations:
> 
>    - A mini-TOC appears listing the topics under the book.
>    - A summary topic appears describing the entire book (and the topic

> isn't
>    listed as one of the topics in the book).
>    - Nothing appears at all. You have to double-click the book to see
the
>    topics under it, and then select the topic you want.
> 
> I currently do the first -- add a miniTOC for the book's topic. But 
> yesterday I used a help file, saw the same thing, and thought to
myself,
> why
> the repetition of the table of contents?

I haven't done the mini-ToC thing, because my Help is WebHelp with the
ToC expanded in the frame/pane immediately to the left of the topic
window, so my approaches are:
If there's a general/intro-ish page for that section, that's what I
point to.
If there's a logical first step page, that's what I point to.
If the section is just a collection of vaguely related pages, none of
which has any compelling reason to be first... then I pick one for that
honor, or I write a little one-paragraph intro page... if I'm not
feeling too lazy.

I'd be interested to see if others have some better approaches. Mine are
kinda haphazard in that respect.

 - Kevin
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publish quality Help, Web, and print content. Perfect for technical 
authors, developers, and policy writers. Download a FREE trial.
http://www.componentone.com/DocToHelp/

True single source, conditional content, PDF export, modular help.
Help & Manual is the most powerful authoring tool for technical
documentation. Boost your productivity! http://www.helpandmanual.com

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