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Subject:Re: "Ripped" borders for screenshots? From:"Jeanne A. E. DeVoto" <jaed -at- JAEDWORKS -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 2 Feb 1999 17:31:48 -0800
At 3:12 PM -0800 2/2/99, Wayne Douglass wrote:
>This strikes me as an instance of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
>Why use any "ripped" effect at all? The end user will know that a
>particular image is part of a larger screen without these cues.
The point of using the ripped border is precisely to ensure that the reader
does know the image is part of a larger screen. Without these cues,
depending on the cropping of the screen shot, the context, and the reader's
level of familiarity with the software, it may not be obvious at all.
(One other place where the ripped border or a similar effect can be useful
is in online help. I've needed to place graphics of buttons and other
interface elements within the actual online help window [don't ask].
Problem: user testing showed some users would click the button picture in
the window, instead of the actual button elsewhere on the screen, which was
understandable since their focus of attention was on the help window. The
solution was to use a picture with a recognizable portion of the button,
but with one end "fading out" so that it was instantly clear that this was
not an actual, clickable button.)
