Re: Getting rid of the manual

[Rebecca Stevenson <rjstevenson -at- sprynet -dot- com>]

OK, I'll bite. *Why* are you doing this? Changing something out of your direct control (your users' minds) is always hard.

My current company does not ship dead trees around. Our manuals are available as PDFs and HTML, not really integrated Help.

Rebecca

-----Original Message-----
>From: David Loveless <daveloveless -at- gmail -dot- com>
>Sent: Jul 25, 2006 11:54 AM
>To: "List,Techwriter" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
>Subject: Getting rid of the manual
>
>Everyone,
>
>My company is moving away from a printed user manual. We are doing
>this gradually to ease our customers into it. Our previous version had
>500 pages of user documentation, our current has 150, and the next
>will probably have nothing more than a quick start card or guide.
>
>Instead of a manual, we are providing vastly updated and more complete
>Help files. I've noticed that many products do this. Sadly, our
>previous versions have given very little emphasis to the Help, and
>there is a general feeling of incompetence when it comes to the older
>files. The newer versions are better, but those feelings still linger.
>


Rebecca

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