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Subject:Re: Style Guide for online help From:Todd Snarr <todd_snarr -at- AUTOSOFT -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 29 Jan 1998 12:27:10 -0700
Jennifer O Neil asked:
>I need to produce a style guide for online help. I've done one for
>our paper documents but am not sure what I should consider for online
>help and where I could go for info. Any ideas?
If you're writing Windows-based help, you could refer to Microsoft's "The Windows Interface Guidelines for Software Design" (ISBN 1-55615-679-0). Chapter 12, "User Assistance," provides guidelines for writing context-sensitive Help, task-oriented Help, reference Help, and wizards. Ask your developers for a copy of the book...if they're designing a lot of GUIs, they may have a copy floating around.
I don't know of anything specific to ASCII-based help, but many of the Windows-based guidelines can be applied to this environment as well.
Good luck...
Todd Snarr
Auto-Soft Corporation
Salt Lake City, UT
todd_snarr -at- autosoft -dot- com
