Re: Must documentation always follow the UI?

[Suzette Leeming <suzette -dot- leeming -at- gmail -dot- com>]

What type of documentation are you creating? Is it user documentation?
Reference documentation? Online help files? That will make a difference IMO.

Suzette Leeming


On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 3:43 PM, Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com>
wrote:

> If this *were* task-based, and the task was filling out a form for an
> initial configuration, then I'd use the "tab" order of the fields.
>
> Documenting self-explanatory UI elements such as "path" or "file name"
> is clutter unless there's some value to add to what the user sees in
> the UI. E.g. "file name: the name of the file" is clutter, but "file
> name: 128 characters max." might be useful.
>
> On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 12:34 PM, Mike Starr <mike -at- writestarr -dot- com> wrote:
> > It's not always all about task-based documentation. There is a time and
> > place for reference documentation. At some point, users need to be able
> to
> > understand every UI element even when we don't provide them with
> > documentation for a task that uses that particular element.
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