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Subject:Re: sophisticated users? (long) From:Scott Miller <smiller -at- CORP -dot- PORTAL -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 22 Jun 1998 10:19:40 -0700
Online help that uses instructions like "Load the Toolkit" is disgusting
and should be taken out and shot. There are tons of help documents out
there that say things like "In Edit mode..." "From the Fungo dialog
box..." "Choose a format and..." without telling you how to get in Edit
mode, or how to open the Fungo dialog box, or what a format is and how
to choose it. You end up with Dead-On-Arrival help topics, where the
user can't get past the first step. Even worse, the whole procedure is
presented so nicely, the solution to their problem is there, they just
can't get to it because of a useless Step 1. This is what gives online
help a bad name.
Unless... (backpedal backpedal backpedal) loading the toolkit is a
prerequisite to many of the tasks you write about, and soon becomes
second nature. In that case, including the procedure for loading the
toolkit gets redendant quickly. So, go ahead and write "Load the
Toolkit" and link it to a popup that describes how to load the toolkit.
Since the instructions are in a popup, the procedural help topic remains
open. (This is only possible, however, if loading the toolkit is a
one-step procedure. You don't want to include a procedure in a popup,
for obvious reasons.)
If the procedure for loading the toolkit is too long, you can use "Load
the Toolkit" and provide a link to it that opens a procedure in a
secondary window, a smaller one that sits on top of the original help
topic. That way, the original help topic stays open so that when they
are through loading the toolkit, they can go back to it. (This assumes
Win 95 help, where you can have more than one secondary window open.)
You can also use a more short-hand delivery such as "Choose File - New"
for more sophisticated users.
- Scott Miller
smiller -at- portal -dot- com
-------------------------------------
> The argument from some developers in the company is that
> our users are "too sophisticated" to be led through a GUI or
> process from the beginning like this. What they would like
> to see are instructions such as "Load the Toolkit," rather than
> "From the <b>Tools</b> menu, select <b>Load Toolkit</b>,"
> where we assume that the user has played with the GUI and
> figured out how to load the Toolkit by themselves.
>
