Advantage of a Rainy Summer

This article deals, despite the title above, with aspects on handling and checking of technical documentation. I consider these aspects as part of the functionality of documentation besides more conventional functionality such as factual correctness, layout, combination of figures and text.

Rullgård, Åke. TC-FORUM (2000). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design

Adventures in Collaboration: The Story of an STC Faculty Internship  

Rentz relates the lessons she learned as an academic who contributed to a writing project for a private company.

Rentz, Kathryn. Intercom (2003). Articles>Collaboration>Industry and Academy

Adventures in Screencasting    

How do you best assist users whose learning styles are more visual than verbal? Tietjen discusses the benefits and the how-to of screencasting, a mixture of visuals, audio, and complementary text.

Tietjen, Phil. Intercom (2008). Articles>Documentation>Multimedia>Screencasting

Adventures with OpenOffice and XML

In addition to being open source, saving as XML makes OpenOffice truly open. Aside from being open source, XML's self-documenting nature allows us to dive into the document format without having to dive into C++. And more significantly, XML allows us to use simple, free tools to manipulate the documents themselves. In this article we will examine the structure of the format.

Sergeant, Matt. XML.com (2001). Articles>Software>Word Processing>OpenOffice

Advertisers are Missing the Internet Connection, OPA Report Reveals

According to a June 2006 study conducted on behalf of the Online Publishers Association (OPA) by the Center for Media Design at Ball State University, advertising dollars aren't keeping up with skyrocketing consumer web demand.

Dye, Jessica. EContent (2006). Articles>Content Management>Marketing

Advice for New Managers: Part 1

The central mistake new managers make is egoism. On the surface, the change is all about you: you’ve been promoted, you have a new job title, you have a new office. Perhaps you’ve been waiting for this change for some time, while watching peers or friends get promotions, and now finally you feel you’ve received the respect you’ve earned.

Berkun, Scott. ScottBerkun.com (2006). Articles>Management>Collaboration

Advice for Single-Sourcing

I have seen the future and it works. We have just finished our first single-sourcing project using mif2go to convert FrameMaker source files to HTML Help *.chm files. These files are also the source of our printed user guide AND a hyperlinked PDF of the user guide placed on the distribution CD. There was considerable once-off pain setting up conversion templates (including CSS files) and conversion options but our next project will be much faster. The converted files DO NOT require ANY hand tweaking -- we just hand over to the release people to put the *.chm file on the installer CD. Our testing and support people are rapt, and consider the new help far better than the old help. An outsider would have no inkling that the help was produced in this way.

Finger, Hedley. InFrame (2002). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Advice for the Inexperienced Web Designer

Website software and templates have made it easier for inexperienced website designers to create and maintain their own websites. Prior to the development of such items, if you wanted a website for your company you had to retain a reputable website design firm to create a website for you. Website development is not an easy procedure, but if you decide to undertake the process yourself, there are a few simple strategies that can make the process of creating a high-quality website a little bit easier.

Haig, Anders. ReEncoded (2008). Articles>Web Design>Advice

AECMA 1000D - Goal and Reality

The contribution deals with the transposition of projects on the basis of the AECMA-1000D-specification. The author explains problems which exist outside aeronautics with the application of this specification.

Just, Stefan. TC-FORUM (2001). Articles>Documentation>Standards

AECMA Simplified English  

ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English (formerly AECMA Simplified English) is a specification for writing aircraft documentation. The principles can be applied to all industry sectors. ASD-STE100 provides a set of writing rules and a dictionary of words and their meanings. It has a limited number of words; a limited number of clearly defined meanings for each word; a limited number of parts of speech for each word; a set of rules for writing text. This article outlines the standard, and shows how it helps to prevent ambiguity in text.

Unwalla, Mike. ISTC (2004). Articles>Writing>Minimalism>Controlled Vocabulary

Aero, El Escritorio Que Viene

El futuro de Windows pasa por Longhorn, el nuevo sistema operativo que Microsoft prepara para 2005 y que supondrá, según ellos, la 'inmersión vital' de los usuarios en la nueva tecnología. Revisamos lo que se sabe de ello hasta el momento.

Dursteler, Juan Carlos. InfoVis (2003). (Spanish) Articles>User Interface>Operating Systems>Microsoft Windows

Aesthetics Engage Language    

Although the medium of film, by virtue of its photographic process, is image-dominated, some of its finest efforts have been in re-presenting word-centric tales. The text—appealing to the intellect—is refashioned/reinvented into a medium appealing to the senses of sight and hearing, through the personal vision of an auteur/director who adapts material from the language of text to the language of film. Certainly technical considerations come into play, but the auteur’s choices are essentially aesthetic. In rendering words into images, he or she responds to the audiovisual aesthetic of film.

Ades, Sally. Lore (2003). Articles>Rhetoric>Aesthetics

The Affective Domain and the Writing Process: Working Definitions  

Since the time of classical Greece, we have been accustomed to viewing humans as both thinking and feeling individuals. The dichotomy of cognition and affect is so ingrained in Western thought that it seems a natural one; the two elements have seldom, however, been deemed equally important in the scientific community. During the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, psychology gave primacy to affect; humans were thought to be at the mercy of various drives and passions. As behaviorism became more domiúnant in the field, affect was discounted; indeed, there were those who wished to exclude affect from scientific study altogether. More recently, with the ascendancy of cognitive psychology, humans have been viewed as problem-solvers whose thinking processes operate rather like a computer. Often in such a view, affect is seen as “a regrettable flaw in an otherwise perfect cognitive machine” (Scherer 293). But most researchers who study human behavior and human nature agree that the views of both extremes—emphasizing only affect or only cognition—are undesirable.

McLeod, Susan H. JAC (1991). Articles>Rhetoric>Theory

Affordances

The concept of an affordance was coined by the perceptual psychologist James J. Gibson in his seminal book The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. The concept was introduced to the HCI community by Donald Norman in his book The Psychology of Everyday Things from 1988. There has however been ambiguity in Norman's use of the concept, and the concept thus requires a more elaborate explanation.

Soegaard, Mads. Interaction-Design.org (2006). Articles>User Interface>Usability

Afraid So: Horrible Web Monstrosities

Here they come. Nightmare web sites that, from a usability perspective, are horrid monsters. When you're tired and in a hurry, you want a web site to quickly and easily provide relevant content to you, so you can solve a problem or perform some task. Discover common hideous impediments to web usability. WARNING: Not for the faint hearted!

Streight, Steven. Blogger.com (2004). Articles>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design

Afraid to Measure: The State of Communications Accountability

With all the emphasis on ROI of public relations in the so-called 'marketing mix' to increase sales, the communications goals of most leaders and communicators go far beyond public relations ROI connected to sales.

Journal of Leadership Communication Counsel (2007). Articles>Management>Communication>Business Communication

After Enron: Integrating Ethics into the Professional Communication Curriculum    

Recent scandals in the business community have alerted professional writing teachers to the importance of highlighting ethics in the curriculum. From former experiences in teaching courses emphasizing ethics, the authors have adapted the curriculum to include a limited discussion of ethical approaches and terms and assigned group writing projects that consider the effects of business on the broader community. As a result of the integration of this ethical component into the entire course, students learn major ethical approaches; gain a vocabulary of ethical terms they can apply in the business world; interrogate the larger questions of business and its interactions with the local, national, and international community; and engage in the kind of dialectical discussions that require critical thinking.

Kienzler, Donna S. and Carol David. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2003). Articles>Education>Ethics

After Hypertext

The final decade of the last century witnessed the dramatic rise of hypertext as a literary, technical, social, and intellectual phenomenon. Today, despite the fact that hypertext provides the conceptual underpinnings for the World Wide Web (among other things), 'hypertext' remains a relatively peripheral term. In this talk, I'll track some of the ways that 'hypertext' has been articulated during the last five decades, describing how the social construction of hypertext inscribed the technology(ies) in limiting and ultimately self-defeating ways. I'll then attempt to track (and construct) some possible futures for a dramatically redefined hypertext, one constructed as an 'ethic of reference' within and among social communities rather than a technical practice.

Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. Clarkson University (2001). Articles>Information Design>Hypertext

After Sarbanes-Oxley, XBRL?

Financial execs may not appreciate it yet, but this new data-tagging system should speed the flow of info and create new ways to analyze it.

Stone, Amey. BusinessWeek (2005). Articles>Business Communication>Financial>XBRL

After the CMS Implementation Project

Much effort is focused, on the selection and subsequent implementation of a content management system (CMS). While it is obviously vital to ensure that the initial implementation project is successful, this is only the beginning of an ongoing commitment to growing and enhancing the use of content management throughout the organisation.

Robertson, James. CM Briefing (2004). Articles>Content Management>Project Management>Workflow