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Assist your end-users first: technical writing, copywriting, HTML Help, usability, and multimedia - by Epic Trends
Connect with your customers-and fuel your sales-through user assistance: technical writing, multimedia, web content, copywriting, usability, user interfaces, demos, tutorials, html help, and online Help.
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Monday, December 19, 2005
I will be on vacation from December 20 through December 26. I won't be posting to my blog. :) Have a wonderful holiday season!
Monday, December 19, 2005
A good article worth reading:
"The increased sophistication of websites has changed the priorities of web accessibility – with effective in-site search, good navigation, and clear, well-constructed content now the three most important usability issues for disabled internet users - according to new research from user experience consultancy User Vision."
http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article2825.asp
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
The first paragraph of this article explains a lot:
" DITA is an architecture for creating topic-oriented, information-typed content that can be reused and single-sourced in a variety of ways. It is also an architecture for creating new information types and describing new information domains, allowing groups to create very specific, targeted document type definitions using a process called specialization, while at the same time reusing common output transforms and design rules. We discuss several methods that can be used to extend DITA's basic topic types."
http://www.winwriters.com/articles/DITA/index.html
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
During the summer while I was in college, I sold Bibles door-to-door. Really!
So I try to treat every single estimate like it might be my last---and provide as much information as possible. I want the potential customer to get something out of the process, whether they hire me or not.
Web sites need to be like that. You want your web site visitor to come away with more knowledge about a particular subject than what they came to the web site with. They took the trouble to visit your site----now make sure they remember they came away with information, whether they pay or not.
The way you "listen" to the web site visitor is to look at the pages they come in on and the pages they leave on. And of course, invitations for feedback are the ultimate tool, when you are lucky enough that someone actually fills out the form. There are other ways to "listen" I'm sure. I took a poll of some friends on how they listen to their visitors and customers. I'll be posting the friends' methods in a later entry of my blog after I get back from vacation.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
The IRS now has a web site that is easier to use.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1898035,00.asp
Saturday, December 10, 2005
These predictions about 2006 user interface design are worth thinking about.
http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/000666.html
Saturday, December 10, 2005
AJAX is not always the best thing to do.
http://www.straightupsearch.com/archives/2005/12/ajax_for_seo_co_1.html
Thursday, December 08, 2005
I may be participating in a project that requires some .svg animation. For my research, I put together a comparison of many .svg editors, with an emphasis on animation.
Comparison of SVG Editors
Thursday, December 08, 2005
The latest version of Firefox supports scalable vector graphics (.svg) files. I got interested in doing some research about this. The advantages of .svg files are many:
* SVG is open-source code. This means you can easily see, read, and edit the code underlying an SVG image.
* You can deliver .svg files in the same text stream as .html, instead of requiring multiple downloads. This makes your web pages more responsive.
* You can also scale vector graphics to different sizes without sacrificing image quality. This helps web authors match image quality across various screen resolutions.
* The textual aspect of the .svg format allows better indexing than binary graphics. The .svg format also allows you to add metadata and other types of content to the graphic object directly as another set of XML tags with their own namespace. You can sometimes tag binary graphics, but not with much flexibility.
And SVG retains many of the features of binary formats, including Flash, by supporting the following:
* Transparency.
* Animation and sound.
* Zooming and panning.
* Scripting.
* Hyperlinks and database connectivity.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
A boon to technical writers, like myself, Amaya supports both local and remote annotations. I am very excited about this editor.
More about Amaya's features
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
I got notice through Joe Welinske and the Society for Technical Communications about an exciting open source project with the W3C: a structured HTML editor. Structured editors ensure compliance with standards and minimize your mistakes. Your web pages will look more consistent and error-free with this type of editor. You'll spend less time struggling with formatting and more time on your important content. While working for Intergraph, I used a structured SGML editor for several years. I learned so much about document management during that time-and more about HTML and XML. At the time, I don't think any of the writers in my group or sphere of experience had any idea how much the web would impact our jobs. I am glad I had an opportunity to work in SGML before HTML and XML became a daily reality in a writer's life.
Check out the Amaya project
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