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Subject:RE: Chattiness in manuals From:mlist -at- safenet-inc -dot- com To:techwr -at- genek -dot- com, mlist -at- safenet-inc -dot- com, techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Thu, 19 Oct 2006 14:43:43 -0400
I would love to be able to acknowledge whomever I stole it from,
in 1990. Go nuts.
As for being too weenie... er, I mean, um, sober and practical
to include it in your docs, remember that mine is WebHelp. Any other Help
would work as well, I imagine.
You control how obvious it is.
As I already explained to a couple of people off-list, it isn't
in my ToC.
You won't find mine unless you know to look - in which case it's your own
darn fault for seeking it out - or you happen to be reading the "Things to
Do and Things to Avoid" section and get through to the link in the very last
sentence on the "What not to do" page.
The "What not to do" page is a bunch of legitimate things to avoid while
configuring and using our product, assumptions that don't apply, etc.... all
based on previous calls to Tech Support.
It's only if you click that one little link at the end that you get the
button.
It's your choice to press it more than once.
It took me half an hour to create, one evening (my own time), then about two
minutes to include it in the WebHelp next morning.
Of course, when I'm ready to leave this gig, maybe I'll arrange for the
button to appear at the bottom of every page in the Help...
There's a certain protective, self-incriminating (of the user) beauty in the
"Don't Touch This" button. They have to disobey in order to get it going.
How many huffy engineers are going to say to their manager - "I disobeyed
instructions and got offended - we should expend time and effort to get the
writer fired"?
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gene Kim-Eng [mailto:techwr -at- genek -dot- com]
> Sent: October 19, 2006 2:06 PM
> To: mlist -at- safenet-inc -dot- com; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> Subject: Re: Chattiness in manuals
>
>
> Ok, this is funny. We're waaaaay too serious to use this in our docs,
> but I've been looking for something amusing to put on my personal
> website. Can I steal this?
>
> Thanks,
> Gene Kim-Eng
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <mlist -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>
>
> > At the end, I can't cut off access, so the second last page
> says "If
> > you
> > don't stop you'll go blind", and then the last page is all
> blackness.
>
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