TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:RE: Why do you need a nav system? From:jgarison -at- ide -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 23 Jan 2002 11:12:02 -0500
Sue,
In my case, I had a 900+ page help system, and I defy you to find ANYTHING
using the little books and pages icons. While we were cannibalizing the old
html files into the new one, we had to add the search feature to the old set
of files so that we could find stuff - even though we KNEW it was there, it
took us forever to find.
While Deva operates in a default mode of indexing only <Body> contents, you
can add metatags to specify synonyms.
In my situation, the TOC was awful and would only get worse and more useless
and ineffective. Going to a search capability was a huge improvement.
Your mileage may vary, depending on your content and your audience.
John
John Garison
Documentation Manager
IDe
150 Baker Avenue Extension
Concord, MA 01742
-----Original Message-----
From: Sue Ahrenhold [mailto:SAhrenhold -at- IpdSolution -dot- com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2002 9:38 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Why do you need a nav system?
>My first reaction was "Why would you need a nav system at all?" You'd
have
>to ask Ben Weisner, but Deva Tools (www.devahelp.com) makes a great little
>search engine that works just fine in lieu of a TOC or Index. Users can
type
>in words and find the relevant hit pages. It's very inexpensive, takes very
>little time to set up and maintain, and provides faster search and
retrieval
>of information.
Having spent the vast majority of my career working with the design and
efficiency of reference tools, my immediate reaction to this was to hit the
ceiling. But I overrode myself, and decided to open this up as a discussion.
My main problem with the "just search" approach is that it assumes that
people know the phrase you use for a concept before they look for it. Many
users don't. And I believe that we fail in our mission if we're writing off
even 20% of end users.
For a really basic example, let's take the Search vs. Find concept. If your
product uses Find, and the user enters Search, he's going to think there's
nothing in the documentation about searching. How many synonyms should we
expect them to think of?
I don't believe that many users are ready to give up their TOCs. When I
learn a new program, the TOC is one of the first things I look at, as it
gives me a view of the structure of the documentation, and, through it, the
product.
I have lots more ideas, but not a lot of time. But I would be glad to go on
if anyone's interested.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Attention ForeHelp and Doc-to-Help Users! Upgrade your existing product to
RoboHelp for only $299, through January 31st. RoboHelp can import your
existing Help projects! Learn how else RoboHelp can benefit you. www.ehelp.com/techwr
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
