RE: documenting GUI components that are not labelled

[Susie Pearson <spearson -at- espial -dot- com>]

GUI components are dark blue, the rest of the GUI is a medium blue color
(this makes callouts difficult).  There are no icons, buttons are labelled,
but that's it.  You could sort of consider listboxes to be labelled, by
virtue of the fact that the first item in the listbox is selected
automatically. There are no tooltips, no popups, b/c it's a non-pointer
based environment.  Maybe part of the problem (or most of the problem) is
that the GUI design team was laid off.  

Susie Pearson

-----Original Message-----
From: Iggy [mailto:iggy_1996dp -at- yahoo -dot- com]
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2001 12:58 PM
To: Susie Pearson; TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: documenting GUI components that are not labelled


If it's going to be hard to document then it's going
to be hard to understand. Remember, for every bright
and savvy user in the world, there is also a complete
idiot jonesing to call tech support.

So it's just a screen of blank fields and gray
buttons? Please define "not labelled". If it's truly a
blank screen with fields, definitely talk to the GUI
team and have them plop some words or icons in there.

--- Susie Pearson <spearson -at- espial -dot- com> wrote:
> The majority of the components in the GUI I'm
> documenting are not labelled.
> I'm taking screen caps as I go along, but when I
> explain what a text field,
> list, etc. is for, how should I indicate to the user
> what GUI component I'm
> using?  Callouts on the screen cap?  The only
> problem there is that the
> screen cap can get pretty busy.  Should I perhaps
> talk to the GUI designers
> about labelling screen components? The app I'm
> documenting is a TV-based
> e-mail app, nothing fancy, and I don't think the
> unlabelled GUI components
> will give users grief, it only makes it hard for
> *me* to document.....

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