RE: Two cool tricks for Web-based Help

Subject: RE: Two cool tricks for Web-based Help
From: "Rowena Hart" <RHart -at- ACDSystems -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 07:47:46 -0800

Hi Geoff, all,

One clarifier to Geoff's excellent tip: The page.asp/page-help.html
convention only works if the ASP page contains static content. If the
ASP page contains dynamic content (i.e. the info on the page changes
depending on a user choice, such as an option from a drop-down list) the
convention breaks down.

I'll give you an example to clarify what I mean. We used the
page.asp/page-help.html convention for a financial application.
Everything worked fine until developers started creating dynamic pages
for buy/sell transactions. In other words, the content of the pages
changed completely depending on the type of transaction that the
customer selected from a drop-down list. Our only solution, at the time
anyway, was to hard-code links to the appropriate help file.

If anyone has a work-around for dynamic ASP pages please share it!

Cheers,

Rowena

Technical writer, ACD Systems, Victoria, BC, CA
Instructor, SFU Technical Communication Certificate
Advisor, SFU Writing & Publishing Program
Master of Arts (distributed learning), Royal Roads University

> -----Original Message-----
> From:
> techwr-l-bounces+rhart=acdsystems -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+rhart=acdsystems -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- c
> om] On Behalf Of Geoff Hart
> Sent: Friday, November 17, 2006 5:46 AM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: Two cool tricks for Web-based Help
>
> Thought I'd pass along a couple cool tips related to file
> management and Help topics in the context of Web pages. The
> first one, first described (in my experience) by Colin Dawson
> (www.info- action.com.au), is so simple it's positively
> brilliant. Here's the example Colin gave:
>
> If your Web pages are ASP files, you'll be generating a
> series of Web pages with names like "file.asp". Rather than
> obsessing over map IDs and how to pass those along to the
> developers so as to make the help context-sensitive, you
> develop a standard naming convention: use the identical file
> name, but replace the .asp with .htm for the help file's
> name. Away goes any need for a map file and numerical map IDs!
> This approach is easy to extend: if the files produced by the
> developers end in .htm, you add a small tag to the help file name:
> thus, for page.htm, the Help file becomes page-h.htm or
> page-help.htm if you don't feel the need to be concise.
>
> Obviously, what this lets you do is work a bit more
> independently of the Web developers (i.e., no need to
> exchange and verify map IDs) because the naming convention is
> simple, consistent, and easy enough for even a developer to
> use. <g> Of course, you still have to do some QA, but much
> less than with map files because it's harder to undetectably
> screw up an alphanumeric name than it is to mistype a simple
> number, and easier to catch the error. I imagine the same
> approach could be extended to conventional (non-Web) software
> too, with a bit of fudgery to make the plumbing work: so long
> as each screen, window, or dialog has a name, you can add -h
> to the name of the help topic.
>
> This first tip comes from a summary of an presentation by
> Colin at the last STC annual conference, in which he
> discussed the use of Flash files (loaded from pages named as
> described above) to present the online help. That's the
> second trick. Not enough details in the summary for me to say
> much more, but basically this approach takes advantage of the
> fact that Flash is more standardized than HTML plus
> javascript, and thus behaves more predictably across browsers
> and platforms, because one company (formerly Macromedia, now
> Adobe) controls development of the reader. But there are
> other cool things you can do with Flash that are trickier to
> do in HTML plus its add-ons.
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --
>
> Geoff Hart ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
>
> (try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)
>
> www.geoff-hart.com
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
>
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> WebWorks ePublisher Pro for Word features support for every
> major Help format plus PDF, HTML and more. Flexible, precise,
> and efficient content delivery. Try it today!
> http://www.webworks.com/techwr-l
>
> Easily create HTML or Microsoft Word content and convert to
> any popular Help file format or printed documentation. Learn
> more at http://www.DocToHelp.com/TechwrlList
>
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WebWorks ePublisher Pro for Word features support for every major Help
format plus PDF, HTML and more. Flexible, precise, and efficient content
delivery. Try it today! http://www.webworks.com/techwr-l

Easily create HTML or Microsoft Word content and convert to any popular Help file format or printed documentation. Learn more at http://www.DocToHelp.com/TechwrlList

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