Re: TECHWR-L Digest, Vol 45, Issue 27

[Fox Cole <foxcole -at- gmail -dot- com>]

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009,Deborah Hemstreet wrote:

> Major success: All text is being passed through me to make consistent
> for capitalization, expression, terminology, and embedded help in the
> GUI is also going to be passed through me!
>

Congratulations, Deborah! That's a major step indeed. I've no doubt you will
"keep bugging" them; you are persistent, consistent, and unafraid to stand
up for the user. Very impressive, and I'm confident that before long, you'll
win them over entirely.

Are there any usability studies about how users prefer to see data
> displayed on screens? Specifically, if a user has a choice of seeing
> several headings collapsed, all of which can be expanded to enter the
> desired data, as opposed to all headings on a screen open, but
> necessitating a lot of scrolling down... which would the user prefer?
>

Avoid scrolling! But also, quite a number of design issues come into play to
keep a data-entry form manageable for the user. A good overview and useful
starting place is the book "Don't Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to
Web Usability" by Steve Krug.

I also personally like and apply the usability guidelines from
http://www.wammi.com/. (It's a very popular site, so I'm sure someone has
beaten me to the suggestion.)

Cheers!
---Fox

If the world were a logical place, men would ride side saddle. -- Rita Mae
Brown
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help  
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices.
http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/

Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/

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