“The worst Help system I have ever seen”

Sarah Maddox reported from the WritersUA conference that Microsoft’s April Reagan gave a frank presentation on the planning and design that has gone into version 3 of Microsoft Help. She was quoted as saying the feedback on the Help 2 (used in Windows Vista) was poor. For example, “This is the worst help system I have ever seen”.  At a previous… Read more »

Manager’s guide to single sourcing: What’s the problem, why is there a need?

I thought it might be useful to look at a simple question: Why is there a need for single sourcing technical documentation? For people who aren’t technical authors, it’s often unclear why technical authors talk so much about “single sourcing”. Isn’t that just cutting and pasting? What’s the problem? In later posts we’ll look at the… Read more »

Will SEO be replaced by AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation)?

Internet psychologist Graham Jones has just posted an interesting Blog called “Search is on its deathbed…bye, bye SEO“. In it he states: “They (Search Engines) would like us to think that we are constantly “searching” for things online – but we aren’t. We are “locating” stuff we already know about, a lot of the time.”… Read more »

How barcodes could be the technical author’s best new friend

The latest mobile phones in the UK are using barcodes to provide one of the first practical applications of augmented reality. It’s technology that could see barcodes appear on thousands of physical items – something which would open up new opportunities for technical authors providing user assistance for equipment. The advert below shows how it’s… Read more »

User documentation – Does it matter?

It’s very hard to tell how much user documentation matters to people. One completely un-scientific way is by looking at the messages on Twitter, on any given day, that make mention of it. Below are some of the messages posted on Wednesday 4th March 2009 that mention documentation. We’ve omitted those messages that relate to… Read more »