Re: Chattiness in manuals

[Manny Blatt <mblatt -at- compuwrite -dot- com>]

My first reaction -- to the "Use the mouse (not the furry kind ") 
comment -- was that this is dumb. But, thinking further, yes, there is a place.

Many years ago, I got my first DOS-based fax software (program name 
lost to time). The screen was laid out beautifully and looked exactly 
like a fax keypad. Quite an elegant UI for its era. The OS was, of 
course, single tasking and the modem speed was 1200 baud max.

The printed manual said something like: "Tab to the fax button on 
your screen and press enter. When you hear the line connect, take a 
break or do something else. From now on, this is not a computer, it 
is a fax. You will need to wait. And wait. Have a coffee. Go to the 
bathroom. If the fax is long, you will probably wait some more when 
you return. Relax. It sure beats feeding pages into the fax machine."

On reflection, I found this approach appropriate. Even comforting. 
And, yes, I was a tech writer at the time.

I also recall a manual I wrote for a very serious client. The system 
was horrendously complicated, very slow, and extremely buggy. The 
user would press the GO button and then wait interminably for results 
that might never appear. The manual was well designed and easy to 
follow, but still very "businesslike".  This made it almost useless.

The approved manual read: "When all of the search criteria have been 
entered, press the GO key. The search results are displayed".

I preferred to say: "Enter all of your search criteria and press the 
GO key. If everything is OK, a result will display within 20 minutes. 
This might be a good time to take a break. Do not touch the keyboard 
after you press GO. If you press any key after pressing GO, your 
search will terminate and your terminal will hang. You will not see 
an error message or any other indication that this occurred. If 20 
minutes pass and no results display, please restart your terminal and 
try the search again".

As the user, which information would you prefer?

NB: What I REALLY wanted to write would not be appropriate in ANY manual ;-)

MB


At 07:16 AM 10/17/2006, you wrote: