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Janoff, Steve said a bunch of stuff, including:
[snip]
> One thing I meant to mention in the discussion on screen shots -- the
> "less is more" idea particularly applies to online help,
> since the idea
> is that you have the application open, and the exact screen
> visible (in
> the configuration you're trying to apply), when you consult
> the help, so
> you don't need to reproduce the screen that the user is
> looking at right
> now UNLESS you really have to show something completely non-intuitive,
> let's say.
On the other hand, if Help (to you ... ok, to me ... and to your/my customers) means standalone WebHelp, rather than context-sensitive Help, then maybe a completely obvious and blatant screencap is just the thing to orient the user who just came looking via:
- the Help ToC
- the Help Index
- the Help' search function
... a kind of "you are here... or at least, you should be if you've found the correct topic for your need."
I once wrote a longer sentence than that. It, too, hurt to read.
- Kevin ( who still does WebHelp without the context-sensitive aspect )
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Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
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