Re: Guidelines for including screenshots in numbered procedures

[Dick Margulis <margulisd -at- comcast -dot- net>]

t (may I call you t?),

Your guidelines seem sensible. However, there is an additional strategy 
you may be able to apply that will reduce the need for screenshots still 
further.

You can include, perhaps as a preliminary section of your user guides, 
some generic screenshots that represent the various styles of UI used in 
your system. On these you can name specific sections of each screen so 
that you can later refer to them with a word or two. If the user knows 
which of the named sections to look in, or if certain controls are 
consistently located in a specific place, this can reduce the need for 
repetitive and function-specific screenshots later in the document.

If your UI is so inconsistent that no two screens have anything in 
common, then translation cost are the last thing you should worried 
about. Keeping an eye out for an armed mob of users surrounding your 
building ought to be a much higher priority.

Dick Margulis
www.dmargulis.com

tstorer -at- free -dot- fr wrote: