TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
When I've done context sensitive help the context sensitivity is dialog based. When they press whatever button is designated for that given dialog I provide an overview of this dialog box, what they can do, along with related topics. In the dialog box itself include pop-up help for the given fields to tell the audience what to do in XYZ text-box, or what drop-down to chose for what.
Hope that helps.
> Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 10:19:51 -0700
> From: smckinn2001 -at- yahoo -dot- com
> Subject: Best Practices in Context-Sensitive Online Help
> To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
>
> All,
> I've been asked to present information on the best way to redesign our online help, currently NOT context-sensitive, to be context sensitive. In the past I've written help topics describing each dialog and linking to the associated tasks that can be performed. That way the procedures aren't cluttered with all the field explanations, and the procedural topics also link back to the associated dialog topics. Make sense?
>
> Or is there another way? The reason I might not just link to a procedure from each dialog is that a) there may be more than one task that can be performed from a certain dialog or b) an individual dialog may be only 1 step in a larger procedure.
>
> Thanks, and please respond to me directly as well as to techwr-l as I'm on digest.
>
> Sue McKinney
>
>
>
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
> Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help
> 2009 tips, tricks, and best practices.
>http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/
>
> Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
> authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
> once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/
>
> ---
> You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as twins398 -at- hotmail -dot- com -dot-
>
> To unsubscribe send a blank email to
> techwr-l-unsubscribe -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> or visit http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/options/techwr-l/twins398%40hotmail.com
>
>
> To subscribe, send a blank email to techwr-l-join -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
>
> Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- Visit
>http://www.techwr-l.com/ for more resources and info.
>
> Please move off-topic discussions to the Chat list, at:
>http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/listinfo/techwr-l-chat
>
Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices. http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/
Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/
---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-
