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Tag Search Results For 'authoring' (111)
If you tear it down, we’ll build around it
Communications from DMN | August 29th 2008
Rebuilding existing documentation. I don’t know about you, but I find that to be something of a daunting proposition. Especially if I wasn’t the one who wrote the original. Sometimes, though, this scary deed must be done. I’ve done read more
Putting the user back in user documentation
Communications from DMN | August 28th 2008
While going through some Google Alerts the other day, I stumbled across this blog post that discusses user-guide-driven development. What the author wrote about bad software code bubbling up into the documentation is so true. The user documentation i read more
Working with subject matter experts
Communications from DMN | August 26th 2008
Subject matter experts (commonly referred to as SMEs) are one of the key sources of information for a technical communicator. Whether a developer, project manager, business analyst, or a QA person, a SME can provide valuable feedback and additional i read more
Reusing content
Communications from DMN | August 25th 2008
Reuse. It’s a small word, but one which has can have huge connotations. Especially in the world of technical communications. Reuse is one of the big themes in our profession right now, and everyone has a theory about it or method that they̵ read more
A question and an answer about style guides
Communications from DMN | August 20th 2008
I briefly discussed style guides in a post a couple of weeks ago. The other day, a reader of this blog left the following comment: Should documents that failed to match with the specified style guide be rejected by the technical editing team? For exa read more
Visual documentation
Communications from DMN | August 13th 2008
My wife and I are doing some work around our house. Over the weekend, we focused on installing a new bathroom sink and cabinet. My wife bought the sink and cabinet at IKEA (they’re both nice looking and sturdy units, and fit into our budget). W read more
Giving up a little control to get a whole lot more
Communications from DMN | August 11th 2008
Over the last several months, I’ve been talking with a number of technical communicators about ideas/concepts, technologies, and trends in our profession. Two topics (or it is just one?) that keep coming up are using wikis and taking advantage read more
The cottage industry of supplementary documentation
Communications from DMN | August 5th 2008
Last week, Tom Johnson wrote a great post about WordPress’ biggest mistake. The post itself was interesting, and thought provoking. But one of the comments really got me thinking. Specifically: If WordPress is so easy, why is there a huge cotta read more
A modest proposal
Communications from DMN | August 4th 2008
In this space and elsewhere, an oft-discussed topic is Web 2.0 and how it affects technical communication. But in many cases, I’ve found that the way in which we traditionally prepared documentation has been shoehorned into a new method for wri read more
How to Edit A Seminar DVD Video Fast…
Adrian.VideoLane.net | August 1st 2008 by Adrian Lee
I am always looking for faster ways to shoot and deliver a seminar dvd video while maintaining the highest quality. When it comes to videography for seminars and workshops, there are hours and hours of footage to capture, edit, render and publish read more
Style guides
Communications from DMN | August 1st 2008
When it comes to style guides, I’m of two minds. I know that they’re useful, and provide a framework for creating consistent documentation. On the other hand, I’ve seen far too many writers and editors become blinkered by the style read more
What makes a good screencast?
Communications from DMN | July 31st 2008
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then how many words is a screencast worth? Obviously, quite a few more. Creating a good screencast, though, involves a lot more than just firing up Camtasia Studio or Captivate or whatever you’re using an read more
The importance of writing meaningful error messages
Communications from DMN | July 25th 2008
The other day, was perusing Yahoo! News. I saw a story that looked interesting, and clicked the link. What appeared wasn’t the story. In the title bar of my browser were the words: Multi-Hop Cycle Detected And on the page was the message: Your read more
Is printed documentation dead?
Communications from DMN | July 22nd 2008
I don’t know about you, but in recent years most of the documentation that I’ve written has been distributed electronically — as PDFs, online help systems, HTML, and even on a wiki or two. The last time I held a printed and bound gu read more
Creating documentation for the small screen
Communications from DMN | July 18th 2008
It’s amazing how quickly small mobile devices have become commonplace. It wasn’t that long ago that a PDA was viewed with curiosity and the smartphone was a rarely-seen small brick called the Nokia Communicator. How times change … O read more
Businesses not as keen on blogs and wikis? We had a hunch
Communications from DMN | July 17th 2008
This article at Network World mentions two new reports out from Gartner and Forrester citing the low adoption (thus far) of blogs and wikis in the enterprise. According to the article, 64% of companies surveyed had no plans to implement web 2.0 tools read more
Include prompts in command line examples, or not?
Communications from DMN | July 15th 2008
I try not to nitpick in this space. Sweating the miniscule stuff is usually a waste of time and effort, and there are enough pedantic technical communicators out there who can nitpick far better than I. But this one has been bothering me for a while read more
Using documentation out of sequence
Communications from DMN | July 14th 2008
User documentation is rarely, if ever, read like an ordinary book. Readers jump around, finding the information that they need to perform a particular task and pretty much ignore the rest. Until they need that information, of course. For better or fo read more
Going from Word to wiki: a few thoughts
Communications from DMN | July 9th 2008
At the company at which I’m currently consulting, my colleague and I have started an experiment to move some documentation to an internal wiki. The source documentation is a set of Microsoft Word files, and (for reasons I’ll detail below) read more
Writing an interface style guide
Communications from DMN | July 8th 2008
Developing an in-house style guide can be tough work. In previous lives, I helped start creating one and worked on revising at least two others. So many details, and so little time to devote to the problem … This article at A List Apart offers read more
Lessons in introductions from O’Reilly
Communications from DMN | July 7th 2008
I’ve been using books published by O’Reilly Media since the mid-1990s — back when the company called itself O’Reilly & Associates. I’ve always found O’Reilly’s books well designed and laid out. There̵ read more
Developing knowledge base articles
Communications from DMN | July 2nd 2008
One great, and often overlooked, sources of user information is a corporate knowledge base (often shortened to KB). Whether used internally or externally, the KB combines user-generated (or, at least, user suggested) documentation with more technical read more
Advice on writing captions
Communications from DMN | July 1st 2008
When you think of captions, what comes to mind are probably pithy sentences below (or above) photos in print or on the Web. Or, maybe, text for the hearing impaired on TV. But the ability to write good captions is a useful skill for any technical com read more
Affiliate Software
KingPin's Organic SEO Blog | June 20th 2008 by KingPin
Image via Wikipedia Many product marketers have gone to affiliate marketing programs to increase the sales of merchandise. An affiliate, also called an associate by some companies, is someone who earns a commission for sending clicks, leads or sal read more
You dont deserve to be number 1 (or do you?)
KingPin's Organic SEO Blog | June 18th 2008 by KingPin
Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr 5 steps to make sure you’re bidding for the right place It’s a fairly well known fact that the higher your search listing appears on a page of results, the more likely users are to see it. In search marketing, a g read more
Catering to the expert user
Communications from DMN | June 18th 2008
Sometimes, the expert user (or super user) — someone who has a deep knowledge of an application or device — is left out of the documentation that we produce. A lot of user-generated documentation caters to the expert user, but there’ read more
Understanding the subject
Communications from DMN | June 4th 2008
In a comment to a recent post on this blog, Rakesh Shukla wrote: The one thing that I’d like to add is that to simplify means to understand. It is really difficult to simplify something that you don’t understand well. Rakesh definitely has a poin read more
Article Authoring Add-in for Microsoft Office Word 2007
AskVG.com | May 31st 2008 by AskVG
This Beta 1 release of the Article Authoring Add-in for Microsoft Word 2007 provides authors of scientific articles with the ability to read and write files from Word 2007 into the XML format used by... You can read the full article at AskVG.com read more
Online Course Authoring with Udutu
Using ICT in Further Education | May 30th 2008 by Patricia Donaghy
Udutu is a sophisticated online course authoring system that enables you to create highly interactive eLearning courses. By using the mydutu tool, you can “design and implement online training and courses without any knowledge of technology&# read more
Expand Your Blogging Voice To Print
Man Vs Blog | May 22nd 2008 by Scott Sweeney
One of the biggest crazes on the internet is how you can turn blogging in to your career. Many of you are attempting this, I know I have been. You can find so many resources that will tell you exactly how to turn that passion for writing into a lucra read more
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