Installation Instructions & Screen Captures

[Michael Barwick <mbarwick -at- RCI -dot- ROGERS -dot- COM>]

Greetings Techwriters!

I've got two issues on the burner for you:

Item 1:
I'm working on instructions for a piece of software.  What's the
consensus about how thorough the installation instructions ought to be?
I've been working on the assumption that every step of the process
should be documented, screen by screen.  My feeling is that at every
point where the customer has to perform an action, it should be spelled
out explicitly in the instructions. Today I've had this assumption
challenged, even though its generally acknowledged that some of the
audience for these instructions will likely be (somewhat technophobic)
newbies.

Item 2:
These instructions will be posted to a website and even if I cut down
the level of detail, I'm still going to have to include some screen
captures.  My supervisor has specified  that screen captures should keep
to a width of 400.  My problem is that virtually all the screen captures
for the software are considerably larger than that and my efforts so far
to shrink them (using Lview Pro) have rendered them unreadable.  Does
anyone know of a process or software or something that will enable me to
make the screen captures smaller without destroying them?

Any help regarding these two items would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Michael Barwick, Technical Writer
<mbarwick -at- rci -dot- rogers -dot- com>

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