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.
Accessing documentation when all the tools are from a single vendor
Subject:Accessing documentation when all the tools are from a single vendor From:"McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> To:"techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 30 Dec 2009 15:36:59 -0500
This doesn't really qualify as irony, but I'm not sure how to categorize it, other than wryly amusing.
Let's say you have tons of documents on your corporate intranet, created in Word.
Let's say you have them on a network that is largely MS Windows servers.
Let's say that they are organized and made available via SharePoint (from guess who).
Let's say that everybody using SharePoint on that network is doing so from a Windows desktop, specifically the well-aged, but not abandoned, Windows XP Pro.
Let's say that everybody using a company machine on that network gets Internet Explorer as their default browser (until/unless they deliberately change to a different browser).
Let's further observe that when I, on a fairly generic Dell corporate machine with XP Pro X64, use IE 8 to track down a market requirements document in SharePoint and double-click the link to open/download that Word document... IE crashes. Every time. ("Internet Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.")
And finally, let's all chuckle as I fire up the Chrome browser, browse to the same Word document, double-click it's link in SharePoint, and have it on my desktop in seconds. (In OpenOffice... but that's another story.)
To sum that up, Google's Chrome browser works at least 100% better than Microsoft's Internet Explorer on a business PC running a Microsoft OS, connecting over a Microsoft network to Microsoft servers via a Microsoft enterprise application to pick up a Microsoft Word document.
Laugh? Or cry? You be the judge.
Oh. Did I dis anybody? As near as I can see, I presented some annoying but verifiable facts (repeated the test with the identical results this very minute). Oi.
Kevin McLauchlan
Senior Technical Writer
SafeNet, Inc.
--
The information contained in this electronic mail transmission
may be privileged and confidential, and therefore, protected
from disclosure. If you have received this communication in
error, please notify us immediately by replying to this
message and deleting it from your computer without copying
or disclosing it.
Are you looking for one documentation tool that does it all? Author,
build, test, and publish your Help files with just one easy-to-use tool.
Try the latest Doc-To-Help 2009 v3 risk-free for 30-days at: http://www.doctohelp.com/
Help & Manual 5: The all-in-one help authoring tool. True single- sourcing --
generate 8 different formats and as many different versions as you need
from just one project. Fast and intuitive. http://www.helpandmanual.com/
---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-
