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Subject:Re: The Alphabet vs the Goddess From:Scott Miller <smiller -at- PORTAL -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 5 Oct 1998 14:29:09 -0700
>>>>>>>
> Every page is a picture. Most of them are pretty boring as pictures,
> but
> they are pictures nevertheless. And the picture is the first thing to
> hit
> the viewer's eyes. With a little luck, that viewer becomes a reader
> and
> meaning flows, but the picture is always first, even on the hundredth
> page
> of an novel with no illustrations.
<<<<<<<
Which is why we write online help so that the picture shows what the
user wants. They're looking for this:
1. First step in a procedure...
Not a sea of words. Or, if they want a sea of words, they want it broken
into chunks, with meaningful headings.
I think I'm getting off the topic, but "the first thing to hit the
viewer's eyes" is something that gets forgotten about when writing help,
and Mike's comments put it in different way than I've seen before, so I
thought I would just say "hear hear." Also, I'm not sure what the
original topic was in the first place.