Microsoft® Manual of Style for Technical Publications, Third Edition (BPG-Other) [Paperback]

I frequently document software that uses Windows GUI elements. So I've been using the WinHELP and HTMLHelp versions of the MS MOS for several years: Those earlier online versions of Microsoft's Style Guide made it easier and faster to take a quick look at a GUI naming or usage convention.

Lamentably the CD-ROM that accompanies the new version 3 of the MS MOS is a giant step backwards in usability. That's because the two PDF "e-books" (MOS and Networking Encyclopedia) on the CD-ROM are entirely static -- they contain NO clickable links WHATSOEVER.

What this means is that if you locate an entry in the on-line version's TOC or Index, you must use the "go to page" tool in Adobe Acrobat Reader to go to the page. This is an especially silly situation given that the PDFs meta-properties indicate that Microsoft used Adobe FrameMaker 7.0 (not Word) to produce the Style Guide: FrameMaker creates clickable cross-references by default, meaning that Microsoft manually disabled them as part of producing the Style Guide's PDF! (The third item on the CD-ROM, the Computer Dictionary comes as an HTMLHelp .chm file, so there are no problems with navigation there...)

If you intend to buy the print version of the MS MOS you'll be satisfied. If you intend to buy this book because you want the latest, greatest *on-line* version of the Style Guide, FORGET IT.

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08 July, 2008 UPDATE. After using the PDF for about three years, I'm even more frustrated by Microsoft's incompetence. In the name of "intellectual property" (one of Microsoft's favorite words), the company has created a nearly-useless PDF while failing to truly achieve its misguided security aims.

As I said in my original review, the lack of clickable cross-references means you must instead manually go to a page listed in the TOC or Index. But wait -- the geniuses at Microsoft didn't bother to correlate the PDFs logical and physical page numbers. Yes, if we have full-featured Acrobat we can manually number the pages so that when we tell Acrobat or Reader to go page "x" it actually displays the desired page and not page "x-4" or thereabouts. But why should we have to do that?

But wait, it gets worse. We can't use full-featured Adobe Acrobat (as opposed to reader) to extract pages from the PDF and save them as a separate PDF. BUT we can -- and here's the absurdity -- delete all pages we don't want to extract and save the result of that as a PDF. So we can extract pages, but not directly...

We also can't print *any part* of the PDF. So if we want to print, say, four pages about heading usages we can't do that. The style guidelines are in some way "proprietary" I guess, and so simply must be protected against unauthorized sharing...

Then, too, while looking for a way to print a few pages, I discovered that I couldn't export the PDF as a Postscript or encapsulated Postscript, but I could export it as a Word or Word RTF file. So we can save the contents in some unlocked formats but not others. Brilliant...

In the end, Microsoft's preoccupation with "locking up" the online version of its Style Guide has only succeeded in wrecking the Guide's usability while only partially achieving the desired level of security. How like Microsoft to get it wrong that way...

This book ok, but not great. Some of their standards are a little antiquated.

If you are a software tech writer, check out the Sun Technical Publications, Read Me First! A Style Guide for the Computer Industry, Second Edition.

If you work in the Mac world, then get the "Apple Publications, Style Guide." It is available free on the web.

Technical writers, journalists, editors and any who write about computer technology or employ content for worldwide audiences will find this newly updated and expanded third edition of Microsoft Manual Of Style For Technical Publications to be a 'bible' of essential information covering everything from how to write better documentation supporting web sites to knowing standards for accessible communications. This could have been featured in our computer books section but any involved in the modern literary world should have it too: it covers the basics of how to optimize computer-based writing systems and addresses all the common style problems along the way.