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Subject:Re: Online Help Systems From:holmegm -at- comcast -dot- net To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 07 Oct 2003 12:24:28 +0000
Chuck Martin wrote:
>P.S. I might add that I'm far from impressed with eHelp's FlashHelp
>technology. First, it looks like they are using it on their site, and it's
>(a) slow and (b) more flash (as opposed to Flash) than substance. Second, to
>require users to install a plug in to view Help is not user friendly at all.
>There's a reason why interaction design experts eschep the use of Flash on
>most web sites, and the ned for a non-universal (although mostly universal)
>plug in is but one of those reasons. Lot's of marketing hype here, so it's
>important to look past it and see just what it does provide--and what it
>costs.
Yep, I agree. I admit that my testing was brief, but it seemed like it was
using Flash for the wrong thing - the navigation framework. I was hoping
that it would offer an easy way to enhance the *content*, but it just seems
to recreate (badly) the standard Help interface, in Flash.
And it was dirt dog *slow* on the machine I tested it on, a quite capable
box that has no trouble with most Flash files. I could watch the little
navigation widgets slowly pop in, on a project on my hard drive. While
DHTML web help feels seamless over the network.
Flash is great for many things (instructional animations, non-rectangular
clickable objects, zooming, etc.) but this seemed like a fairly useless
application of it.
RoboHelp for FrameMaker is a NEW online publishing tool for FrameMaker that
lets you easily single-source content to online Help, intranet, and Web.
The interface is designed for FrameMaker users, so there is little or no
learning curve and no macro language required! Call 800-718-4407 for
competitive pricing or view a live demo at: http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l3
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