Is the Help Helpful? How to Create Online Help That Meets Your Users' Needs

Intended for technical writing students, project managers, writers, editors, and others involved in the production of online help, this guide presents the full cycle of help content development, regardless of the operating system running the application, the type of help being produced, or the tools used to produce it. The 10 most common complaints that users have with online help, the causes of these underlying problems, and ways to avoid them are discussed in detail. Eleven steps in the ideal help development process, their benefits, and the problems that arise when a step is left out are also included. Techniques for planning, writing, editing, reviewing, and testing online help are covered and sample specifications, outlines, and maps for a help project are provided.
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From: Amazon
Posted: Sep-24-2008

There is a better book available

In addition to this book, I also bought "Standards for Online Communication," (SFOC) by J. Hackos & D. Stevens. As of this writing, I've read much of both books. Is the Help Helpful? seems to have taken it's material from SFOC. SFOC is more thorough and therefore easier (for me) to understand. If...

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From: Amazon
Posted: Jan-25-2006

Excellent synopsis of the help development process

This book brings together many aspects of writing technical documentation, with the specific focus of writing online help. It's like "Managing Your Documentation Projects" (Hackos, 1994), but for online help projects, without assuming a large doc department or heavy-weight processes. The first...

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From: Amazon
Posted: May-05-2005

Truly awful "book"

I think the author was trying to be funny when she wrote this supposed 'book.' I am a novice when it comes to authoring help systems, and as I read through this book I could not figure out why I wasn't understanding much. After much consideration, I realized that the headings in this book are...

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From: Amazon
Posted: Apr-25-2005

for writers and programmers

Online help is a wonderful thing when well done. But how to achieve this? This is different from a standard programming problem, when one might be implementing an algorithm incorrectly or inefficiently. There are various ways to test for these. But when it comes to determining the usefulness of a...

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