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The main advantages of online information are in
how the information is reached and
how the information is delivered.
Context-sensitive links from software applications can quickly bring the reader directly to useful, applicable information.
The table of contents, index, and full-text search permits more dynamic access much faster.
When the requirement for printed information becomes less, you can realize an immediate savings on printing and shipping expenses.
The main disadvantages of online information are in the discomfort of reading text on a screen and in the difficulties of printing entire manuals and page ranges.
However, another disadvantage of many implementations of online help is Lots of Plumbing but Little Water. The implementation has working context-sensitive links from every widget in the interface, yet the resulting pop-up dialog boxes have little content and few links to more information.
A common occurrence when you need assistance with some Fritz widget in a dialog box.
Your first click is on the tiny question mark in the corner of the dialog box just a few pixels away from the minimize and close icons, because there is no obvious Help button.
Your second click on the Fritz widget.
You get a pop-up with the text This is where you turn Fritz on and off, as if the checkbox next to the Fritz label didnt already tell you that!
Your third click makes the next-to-useless pop-up go-away.
In trying to get the online help plumbing to work without errors, the technical writer had little time to provide more information or relevant hyperlinks about what Fritz does, what settings interact with Fritz, what values are valid, etc.
A reader is forgiving up to a point. The documentation typically has only three opportunities to prove its value to the reader. When the reader refers to the documentation, searches for information, and doesnt find what they need, their belief after the first two failed attempts is that they are too novice or too stupid with the software to know what to look for; it must be their fault.
However, after the third failed attempt to find useful information in the documentation, the reader quickly surmises that they arent the ones at fault. The documentation and/or application are at fault. The reader will rarely waste their time again.
Even when the pop-ups for every widget in the dialog box did contain some information, you had to click three times for every widget in the dialog box to learn everything about that dialog box.
In many cases, a printed manual with all of the information about Fritz on one or two pages would have served the reader better than this pop-up happy context-sensitive online help.
The technical writer was justified in using all context IDs provided by the developer and in avoiding duplication of information (a legitimate maintenance issue). However, they created a usability issue.
In most cases, a given dialog box can usually have all of its Fritz widgets described in a single banner topic.
Look into ALIAS and MAP sections of the project files to get the individual Fritz context IDs to route to your single topic that discusses the entire dialog box. Even in the rare cases when the dialog box coming from software engineering is so complicated that it cant be discussed in one topic, breaking it into two or three topics is still better than letting umpteen individual Fritz context IDs dictate that many pop-up topics.
Look into in-line topics or targets which can get the user to the correct, context-sensitive location of a larger topic.
Note: Jared Spool of User Interface Engineering states from his research and usability studies that users are not adverse to scrolling if the information is useful and relevant.
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Open-Source tools compliments of Voyant Technologies, Inc. and Glenn C. Maxey.
01/13/2003
TP Tools v2-00-0a
# tpt-hug-02