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Subject:Re: Field-specific Help From:"Char James-Tanny" <charjtf -at- gmail -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Fri, 17 Aug 2007 01:04:58 -0400
> In my opinion, you can do without the documentation only if either no
> assumptions are made, or if the assumptions are guaranteed to be shared
> by all the users you care about.
Just a note...if field-level Help is used for some fields but not all,
and users request Help for the undefined fields first, they may never
realize that Help exists for some of the other fields (and thus never
look for it).
For fields (like "Name") that seem self-explanatory, there are usually
some formatting rules that are applied. For example, I never know
whether the hyphen in my last name will be accepted, or if the form
wants a space between the two names, or if the form wants the two
names smashed together. (The best is the airline site that autofills
the form based on my login information, and then tells me my last name
was typed incorrectly.)
Char James-Tanny ~ JTF Associates, Inc. ~ http://www.helpstuff.com
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2006-2007 Microsoft Help MVP
Find a Help Authoring Tool at HAT-Matrix.com ~ http://hat-matrix.com
Co-author of "Managing Virtual Teams" ~ http://www.wordware.com/wiki
AuthorIT Certified Consultant, Development, and Training
STC Secretary, 2006-2008
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