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Subject:RE: What help? (was RE: Help on Procedure Writing From:"Thomas Eagles" <eaglescribe -at- hotmail -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 6 Dec 2001 08:33:57 -0500
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jason Willebeek-LeMair [mailto:jlemair -at- cisco -dot- com]
> Subject: RE: What help? (was RE: Help on Procedure Writing
> So, trolling for opinions, what do y'all think should appear
> in "What's This" help?
>
> In our app, we provide:
>
> * Field Name
> * Whether it is Optional or Required to complete the panel
> * A description of what it does, what other areas of the app
> it affects, why you want to use it, etc.
> * An expected value (example, alphanumeric value up to 255
> characters including symbols except for the question mark)
> * An example
Wow, that sounds like a big text popup. The last two places I've worked
used HTML/XML for their GUI, and thus traditional "What's This?" help
wasn't practicable. However, context-sensitive help describes what the
fields or buttons do on each page. If your developers are keeners, they
could put a little triangle or question mark beside each entity
(field/button/tab etc) to allow you to open an HTML popup that will only
describe what THAT entity does. Getting into all the possible field
values and whatnot should be done by linking from the popup to your
standard help files, IMHO.
Just passin' through...
Tom.
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