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: These users have us stumped! From:"Smith, Martin" <martin -dot- smith -at- encorp -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 23 Oct 2002 12:32:04 -0600
John asks:
>>Does anyone have any experience or ideas about writing a
>>non-technical user's guide for the totally clueless?
and added that the users "can't understand the on-line help..."
How about designing the user interface to provide embedded help? One nice
thing about the interaction between Internet Explorer and the Windows
operating system is that you can embed Internet Explorer's Active X control
into your application to display embedded help. Because events in Explorer
bubble up, you can pass events from Explorer's Active X control to your
application and thus provide bi-directional interaction between the
application and the embedded help system.
Take a look at Microsoft Money, which I think does a good job of providing
embedded help for those totally clueless about how to use accounting
software.
Good luck,
Martin R. Smith
Encorp, Inc.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
All-new RoboHelp X3 is now shipping! Get single sourcing, print-quality
documentation, conditional text and much more, in the most monumental
release ever. Save $100! Order online at http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l
Buy ComponentOne Doc-To-Help 6.0, the most powerful SINGLE SOURCE HELP
AUTHORING TOOL for MS Word. SAVE $100 on the full version and $50 on the
upgrade. Offer ends 10/31/2002 (code: DTH102250). http://www.componentone.com/d2hlist1002
---
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.
