Argh! Question about screen captures

[Pro TechWriter]

Great comments from everyone, thank you! I appreciate the good feedback.

1. I would love to re-do all the screen captures, but since all the drafts
are due 12-15, and I still have three more docs to create, this will
probably happen later rather than now, unless someone "makes me" do it, and
allows the schedule to slip so I have the time. (I hate sloppy work too, but
these are installation guides--the user looks at them once, and that's it.)

2. I Iike both ideas presented about using a rounded rectangle for buttons
and a squared-off rectangle for fields. And, I really like the "inverted"
idea with a dimmed background. I use SnagIt for screen captures, and the
editor provides this functionality. That I will try too.

3. As far as red-green colorblindness, yes I know that's not the only one,
and there are lots of others. I use an online utility (part of Bobby? not
sure) to show what my graphics look like to different types of color
blindness. The problem with "red on gray" is that the red just flat
disappears for most CB problems.

I get a daily dose of what a red-green combo yellow-blue color blind person
sees every day: my husband has a moderate version of both types. Orange is
"red," blue is "purple," and yellow can be "tan," "orange," or "green,"
depending on the shade. It took me a year or so to figure out why he wore
such wild-colored clothing! I thought he was just eccentric. :-) but now I
know he's eccentric AND has color different vision :-)

On Dec 3, 2007 10:12 AM, Geoff Hart <ghart at videotron.ca> wrote:

> Pro TechWriter wondered: <<I am getting comments that the screen
> captures don't match (they don't--the developer used two or three
> different physical servers to do the captures on, and one of them
> even had Windows Classic window styling).>>
>
> Although consistency of appearance is highly desirable, it's probably
> one of those things that can be sacrificed if other more important
> issues must still be solved. The most important point is that the
> images must be accurate (i.e., they must match what the users will
> see in terms of their content). After all, unless you're publishing
> in color (which it seems you aren't), they'll all be in black and
> white and won't exactly match the screen display anyway. So some
> level of difference is always acceptable in a pinch.


They issue Word docs (ack) to the users, so the color is there. I am trying
to get them to go to PDFs, where there, at least, I could make the whole
thing grayscale without redoing every gol-darned screen capture.

>
> Time permitting, you should still redo the screen caps on a single
> computer, and ideally use the same platform that most of the users
> will be using. Visual consistency is sufficiently important that it's
> worth striving for.
>
>
I agree, and if I have time I will do it.

Thanks for the great comments. It's a help.

PT