TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
I would love to dialog with any who are doing or have done the
following:
I've joined a company with a software product that is fairly
complicated. The user runs a standard browser and connects to a java
server, which is running the product software.
The browser screen contains three frames. The left (column) frame
contains menu choices, one of which, initially, will be a help or ?
option. Clicking it displays the TOC (topic list) and through it all
online info. No paper docs, except install and initial configuration.
Nothing exists at the moment, so in addition to the data sheets, slide
shows, hardcopy install, etc., i now need to do a set of html files that
the ? will call. Once that's done, I can buy a java help tool like jelp
or j help to get fancier.
I've never done this kind of hypertext-from-scratch before. Have to use
Word 97.
Questions include: Does this make sense? If so, and I have a collection
of linked files, will I be able to go on to context-sensitive help and
all the help bells and whistles (never done any help other than straight
text files in unix)? Seems a little weird to have this totally
state-of-the-art product utilizing many and various of the latest sw
tools, and have one ? button for the whole deal. But then, one of the
selling points is the products simplicity. And also, the online
docs/help are supposed to be done soon. Very soon.
