First Documentation Managers/Leaders mentoring meeting set for 26th May

The first Documentation Managers/Leaders mentoring meeting date has now been set:  for the afternoon of Tuesday 26th May 2009.   The afternoon is dedicated to providing a safe forum where documentation managers can share the issues they face and get their challenging questions answered – not just by an expert but by people who’ve faced… Read more »

Does size matter for a technical author?

Pity the poor software project manager who needs to ship their product in ten languages, because today they are looking at roughly £1.20 ($2.20) per word* in translation costs alone. If they have a programmer delegated to develop the online Help or user guide, then every unnecessary phrase, sentence or paragraph they write can eat… Read more »

Technical authors, documents and getting lost

Via Twitter, someone responded to one of my messages with the statement, “maybe, if you need a manual, it’s a poor product”. I don’t think that’s the case, and my reply on Twitter was: “A map is to a city, what a manual is to an application.” Let me explain. Imagine you need to visit… Read more »

“The worst Help system I have ever seen”

Sarah Maddox reported from the WritersUA conference that Microsoft’s April Reagan gave a frank presentation on the planning and design that has gone into version 3 of Microsoft Help. She was quoted as saying the feedback on the Help 2 (used in Windows Vista) was poor. For example, “This is the worst help system I have ever seen”.  At a previous… Read more »