Re: Go Completely "On-line"

[Mark Dempsey <mxd2 -at- OSI -dot- COM>]

Roger says CD's or on-line delivery is customer-preferred, but they
don't want to use Acrobat.  We're about to put our manuals on CD using
Acrobat, migrating away from HTML because of the annoying difficulties
in getting the manuals into the limited HTML format (You essentially
must write the manual twice, once for print, then once to tweak the
HTML).

I'm curious whether anyone else has encountered resistance to the "extra
step" of Acrobat while customers were willing to accept the "extra step"
of firing up their browser.

The shopping cart concept is easy to implement using Acrobat.  Just
divide your manuals, and post a link (perhaps with a brief summary) on a
web page to each of the pdf files, and ask customers to download and
print the files they need.

Acrobat *does* install as a plug-in in some browsers, BTW, but doesn't
print well doing so (at least for us it's proven problematic).

HTML without tweaking would be nice, but my guess is that we'll have to
wait for XML before it's a reality.

Regards,

Roger Morency wrote:
>
> My company has just completed a series of focus group discussions with some
> our most important clients. [snip]
> 4.      The most surprising revelation was that they unanimously said they
> would prefer to receive documentation on CD ROM or on the Internet. They
> would sacrifice printed material for the ability to do on-line searches for
> topics. They claim they would use this media much more than printed manuals.
> And wouldn't need to call for support as often.
[snip]>
> We are now looking at a completely on-line delivery for our documentation.
> Instead of starting in FrameMaker and working our up to web pages, we think
> it may in fact be easier to start by creating web pages first. We do not
> want to use PDF because our clients have complained about this "extra step".
> Ideally, we would create our documentation web and copy these exact same
> files over to CD giving us two delivery mechanisms (Internet and CD).
>
> It would be nice to add a 'shopping cart' type of functionality, allowing
> our users to pick and choose content for printing custom manuals in house.
> In other words, they would pick which topics to print and the order in which
> they are printed so that they could create their own training materials. Has
> anyone seen a tool that could do this?
>
> We are getting ready for a major rewrite of our library and would like to
> implement and on-line strategy before we start. I'd like to hear from anyone
> who has already gone through the shift from printed manuals to on-line only
> manuals and would like to share that experience. It sounds like it would be
> much easier to maintain (update) once everything was in place. My concern is
> would our customers really use this and how do we continue to provide
> printed documentation to the minority that will continue to request it.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Roger Morency
> rogerm -at- ontario -dot- com <mailto:Rogerm -at- ontario -dot- com>
> Ontario Systems Corp.
> 1150 West Kilgore Ave
> Muncie, IN 47305
> (765) 751-7000
>



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