Manuals types

[Bonni_Graham_at_Enfin-SD -at- PROTEON -dot- COM]

Text item: Text_1

     I'll bite, Shannon.

     My feeling is that we need to watch users (including ourselves) to
     find out what information they're looking for where.  What questions
     are people asking when they go to a book? or to help?

     What I've found is that people seem to want (at least I do, and so do
     the few users I've been able to poll) "what is it" answered online.
     They get real impatient real fast with procedural stuff online because
     there's no good way yet to display the help and the screen
     simultaneously.  Yes, I know Windows help can be set to "always on
     top", but at the cost of half your screen, or of a really narrow help
     window with one word or so to a line.

     I'm going to send this now, before my system decides I didn't really
     want to say any of this and crashes again (like it did the first three
     times I tried to post about changing manual definitions) -- maybe it's
     a sign?

Bonni Graham                               |
Technical Writer                           | Most software is run by
Easel Corporation, ENFIN Technology Lab    | confused users acting on
Bonni_Graham_at_Enfin-SD -at- relay -dot- proteon -dot- com | incorrect and incomplete
President, San Diego STC                   | information, doing things
                                           | the designer never expected.
NOTE: apparently my email address needs    |
to be typed exactly as it appears here,    |          --Paul Heckel, quoted
punctuation and all, or the system gets    |            by William Horton
upset.                                     |