Post by a***@gmail.comI am new in help authoring and I like to learn from examples. Online
help to which applications do you like best as a good example of best
online help? I mean i.e. everyday business desktop applications.
And I have another question. Do you still use Tips of the day? I
noticed that this is less common for new applications.
Thanks in advance.
Hi Adam
Some MS help is worth being modeled on.
Personally I prefer most of the help content to be
contextual help ... help topics linked to every page. Because
this is the typical way that people use help.
People don't tend to read the help, until they get into trouble,
then they look for the Help button and find whatever
it is they need quickly so they can get back to work again.
For quite a few years Microsoft went off the rails. :-)
The bulk of the help they wrote was procedual help. Now with
products like Office 2007 they have finally (took a long time)
come back to contextual help and most office pages have either
help buttons of Super Tips. If the dialog is simple and clear to
understand (through careful design, embedded help, and hover
tips etc) then help is ommitted or reduced in size.
So I'd suggest -
- Look at Office 2007 help (This is the cutting edge of MS)
- Give each significant page a help button.
- Your type of application may need some overview type documentation.
- Your type of application may need some procedural documentation.
With the realization (though usability testing) that users only read the
help
if they have to, most vendors now realize that UI design is most important.
The designer's job is to put the help writer out of business. The screens
should use clear language, embedded instructions, floating tips, whatever it
takes to make the screens intuitive so that trips to the help are reduced.
A screen should concentrate on one task at a time. Don't overwelm the user.
I did a paper on the MS shift to IUI here
http://helpware.net/aphelp/review1.htm
You may find now that many of the links don't work (but try Googling for
it).
==
As for Tip Of Thr Day. TOTD is an attempt of course to help the
user to learn about the application bit by bit. Typically I think people
may glance at it once or twice then turn it off. I know I do, and I suspect
you do. We have good intentions to read a bit every day but we never do.
We just want to do the task at hand done.
So its a good idea... but I think its very time consuming to actually
implement
and the time would be better spent crafting some good UI and UA.
The other thing to consider is screen cams (using say Camtasia by
TechSmith).
Where I work (at Varian) we make very complex analytical instruments.
The help gets very wordy trying to describe these machines and their
accessories,
so we now do screen videos and that reduces help.
We also use a lot of screen images to help describe things (Usually of
hardware).
We use Snagit (by Techsmith) to add arrows etc to these images.
Its much easier to refer to a diagram, than say explain. Mind you it really
adds
a lot of size to your final CHM, so you need to be careful to trim the
images
to the corect size before adding them to help. But we ship on CDROM so
size is not a problem to us.
But that's us. What we do wont necessarily suite you :-)
Office 2007 - I think they the do a lot of things right now. We always like
to add a Gettng Started section (for orientation to the product). You also
need a support page, and contacts page.
Cheers
Rob