RE: Particpating in interface design?

["David Locke" <dlocke -at- texas -dot- net>]

After I responded offline to Geoff's:

> Moreover, as you note, people are human, and in the rush to meet a
deadline,
> often forget to include you in their plans. I've just recently input a
batch
> of help updates for one product based on a clearly spelled-out list of
> changes provided by one programmer before the upcoming release, but in
> reviewing these changes, discovered a batch of interface updates that were
> done over the past year without ever notifying me. So my job next week
will
> be to compare the docs line by line against the revised interface to avoid
> any embarrassments. You win some, you lose some.

Geoff replied asking me to post my response to the list:


I use the What's This Help Compiler in RoboHelp to track UI changes. That's
all I use it for.

To do this, do the following:

1. Install the application on your test machine where you will be installing
   the new releases.
2. Point WTHC at that directory.
3. Select the .exe file for the application.
4. Add the dlls for the application.
5. The baseline report is run automatically.
6. When you install the new release in the same directory as the original
install,
   a delta is generated

You do have to update the dll list and manage any movement of code from one
dll to another. But, you get a list of changes for each update. It's quick
and painless. And, you don't have to wait until the end to find out, or wait
for a programmer to tell you about changes.


>From Geoff's response, I would add that you can start doing this once you
get working builds or installs from development. I would reiterate that
I don't use the WTHC for anything else. I want
context sensitivity to be an index into the larger help.
Disconnected content like that generated by the WTCH is not quite
useless, but nearly so.

David W. Locke



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