Re: Interactive manuals

[jlshaeffer -at- aol -dot- com]

Peter,Â
I understand your concern, but it sounds to me as if Shannon will be documenting big, heavy, material things that'll break your foot if you handle them wrong. Think animated Ikea instructions on a massive scale. These things won't be updated every year, the way our wimpy bits, bytes and pixels are.Â

That said, my only relevant experience was with some limited experiments using interactive laser discs (yeah, golden discs about the size of a 78 RPM phonograph record). So, I'm way out of date.

Jim



-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Neilson <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>
To: Shannon Wade <SWade -at- daktronics -dot- com>
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Sent: Wed, 3 Dec 2008 5:59 pm
Subject: Re: Interactive manuals








Shannon Wade wrote:

> I guess I should have been more clear. By interactive I mean using 3-D models 
and having users click to walk their way through different steps in the process. 
For example, on a sectional display, clicking moves section 1 into place, 
clicking again shows the bolting process, etc.

Sounds like a real pain to update.

I've used these flashy courses at work (some of them *required* 
material) that were for knowledge that was two or three years or more 
out of date. I was wading through one, I think it was for Apache, 
thinking, "This can't be right." Checked Wikipedia and a few key 
websites, found that the technology was one or two major releases beyond 
the neat course.

As far as I know there was no plan to update any of the cours
es, because 
each one was too much "video" production that cannot be fixed by a paper 
doc update release or a revised PDF.

So everybody gets a "diploma" proclaiming they've taken the course. And 
nobody knows anything more than before. Sometimes even less.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^




 




^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

ComponentOne Doc-To-Help 2009 is your all-in-one authoring and publishing 
solution. Author in Doc-To-Help's XML-based editor,  Microsoft Word or 
HTML and publish to the Web, Help systems or printed manuals. 
http://www.doctohelp.com

Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/

---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- 

To unsubscribe send a blank email to 
techwr-l-unsubscribe -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
or visit http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/options/techwr-l/archive%40web.techwr-l.com


To subscribe, send a blank email to techwr-l-join -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com

Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-  Visit
http://www.techwr-l.com/ for more resources and info. 

Please move off-topic discussions to the Chat list, at:
http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/listinfo/techwr-l-chat