Designing and Writing Online Documentation: Hypermedia for Self-supporting Products Wiley Technical Communications Library: Amazon.co.uk: William Horton: Books

Product Description

The #1 guide to creating effective online documentation is now updated and expanded to reflect the latest technological advances, including multimedia.

"...online documentation is a different medium, as different from books as television is from radio or movies from novels. This edition treats online documentation as the new electronic medium it is." –William Horton

Written by an internationally renowned pioneer in the field of technical communication, this is an incomparable guide to the art and science of creating online documents and documentation systems. Rather than concentrating on any one particular program or operating system, William Horton cuts to the heart of effective human–computer interaction and extrapolates a set of universal principles that can be applied to any form of online documentation–from messages, menus, and help files, to computer tutorials and hypertexts. Maintaining an end–user′s perspective throughout, he guides you step by step through every crucial design decision without ever losing sight of the final goal–clear, effective online documentation that people enjoy using.

Proven techniques that help reduce support and training costs for software products, eliminate the need for paper documentation, make programs more appealing and easier to use, and more
∗ A practical, hands–on approach, supported by the latest research and supplemented with dozens of case studies and illustrations
∗ Includes new chapters on multimedia and computer–based training
∗ Comprehensive coverage of all online documentation media–words, graphics, animation, and sound
∗ Updated information on organizing and structuring documents–with examples from Windows, OS/2, and Macintosh interfaces

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

A book for someone who has never even written a term paper. 5 April 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

If you're not a technical writer and you've never seen a web page before, then this book is for you. It deeply covers every banal topic I've NEVER considered before about writing. For example, I've never found it necessary to have a table of contents defined for me, but this book spends a lot of text defining and explaining the most intuitive aspects of writing.

If you are seeking a difinitive argument for why organization is important, this book has 26 pages of cited references for why a project plan is a useful tool. Unfortunately it doesn't give any detailed examples or any advice on how to create a plan. Nor does it discuss how plans might be different based on the project itself or how to take into account a plan that is an interdepartmental project. These are just a few of the questions I had when I started reading this book which have yet to be answered.

This book gives simple guidelines for simple projects and doesn't go much further. Of the 399 pages and 14 chapters, I was forced to skim at least half. This is the first time that I've felt that a technical book wasn't technical enough. As technical writers, our strength comes from interpreting technical material for the less technically inclined. I'm sorry that Mr. Horton couldn't recognize our level of understanding and provide us with more useful reference material than "Designing and Writing Online Documentation."

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Great overview and introduction to hypermedia 7 July 1999

As a project manager in the world of intranet development and more technical development projects, I frequently have to train entry-level consultants on how to develop content for online delivery. This book is the bible I give each employee. It has served as a great foundation for both methodology and understanding of the basics. From there, these employees can move to the next level. Great book!