Re: tabbed help topics

[Chris Despopoulos <despopoulos_chriss -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

ERIKA SAYS:=========
We are considering moving some of our telecom HW manuals to web-based help. Let's say each feature would have its own topic. Our features have a consistent structure, with the same subheadings, that I'd like to convert to tabs on top of each topic page. This will save a lot of scrolling. Does this sound reasonable? I've seen a lot of tabbed sites, but not tabbed help.

We use Flare, but this functionality is not OOB, so we would need to develop it separately and then fear that this custom feature will not work in newer Flare versions. Is it worth the trouble?
=========

I think that's a great idea. You should be able to implement it in a way that can survive whatever Flare might throw at you. Wrap each "tab" in a list item, and give the list a special class... Then use CSS/javascript to make the tabs happen. You would build your help system however Flare does it, and then manually add references to your CSS and javascript... It should all just work. (This assumes Flare will let you assign a custom class to a list. If it doesn't, which I would find quite surprising, you might consider using a different tool... sheesh!)

I'm a fan of trying new things in help. If all your content divides into the same sub-topics, then tabs make very much sense. It would be awesome if you could "remember" the current tab as a user moves to a different feature. So then the reader can quickly compare the same aspect of different features. 

I'm also a fan of not using out-of-the-box products for generating the format of your content. But since you use Flare, you should be able to coerce it into playing nicely with your requirements.


  
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