#31151
Mit dieser Technik steht Ihnen eine einfache Methode zur Verfügung, Webseiten oder einzelne Bereiche eines Webs downzuloaden und als PDF zu speichern.
TECOM (2003). (German) Articles>Document Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat
#23288
What Do Manuals Say About Your Company? 
According to the Consumer Electronics Association, product returns represent a $10 billion-dollar-a-year problem for the consumer electronics industry. Technical support costs are spiraling (even with the migration to off-shore providers) while consumer satisfaction with this support is plummeting. New technology and expanded offerings to a stabilized market are increasing competition. What can manufacturers do to help combat these problems? Better consumer manuals are a start.
Manual Labour (2003). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design
#18837
What We Can Learn About Document Design From A Study of the Visual Convergence of the News Media
Information presentation trends that traverse media boundaries point to a visual convergence among print, television, and the web. Examination of how this process takes place through “remediation” in the news media provides insight into the broader media and cultural context in which technical documentation resides. Creating new knowledge for technical communicators who are beyond an elementary understanding of document design requires interdisciplinary research that investigates how usability is redefined in an age of visual convergence.
Cooke, Lynne. STC Proceedings (2002). Articles>Document Design>Visual Rhetoric
#30315
When Products Become Easy to Use, What's Next for Writers?
People who follow the right trends will someday lead them. Such an opportunity now lies in the hands of technical writers, as the computer field moves toward standardized, graphical, easy-to-use interfaces.
Oram, Andrew. Boston Broadside (1991). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design>Documentation
#10341
Where Is the Instruction in Online Help Systems? 
One of the ironic things about online help systems is that they are very often not helpful and even increase the user's frustration and stress level. This increased frustration sometimes results in the rejection of the software. One solution is to increase the effectiveness of online help systems by designing them from an instructional design perspective. Some of the things we can provide users include: imperative, task-focused procedures; graphic feedback; access to redundant instructions; links to tutorial practice; philosophical and conceptual explanations for 'why' they are completing specific tasks.
Pratt, Jean A. Technical Communication Online (1998). Articles>Documentation>Instructional Design>Online
#27240
Why Do All the Page Numbers in my Word 2002 Document Display as 0?
Word 2002 will display 0 for all page numbers in headers or footers, and all page numbers in a Table of Contents, in the following circumstances.
Kelly, Shauna. Word MVP Site, The (2002). Articles>Word Processing>Document Design>Microsoft Word
#27235
Why Does the Appearance (or Layout) of My Document Change When I Open it on a Different Machine?
Because Word is a WYSIWYG application, it will always try to represent on screen the result you will get if you print on the printer that is selected as the default. Changing printer drivers will almost always change the layout at least slightly and sometimes radically. There are a number of ways to minimize the changes.
Barnhill, Suzanne. Word MVP Site, The (2002). Articles>Word Processing>Document Design>Microsoft Word
#25076
Why Game Documentation is Essential to a Satisfying User Experience
Documentation and information organization are an integral part of video game construction. The video game industry may be one of the directions technical communicators will move toward in the near future.
Peterson, Martin. Usability Interface (2004). Articles>Documentation>User Experience>User Centered Design
#11801
Why Technical Communicators and Usability?
Why technical communicators and usability? Both writers and software development managers have asked me that question. In both cases, it springs from a narrow view of communicators as 'just writers.' It is a point of view that fails to see the many activities, from learning the subject matter to organizing the information or creating good document design, that are hidden behind that final task of writing the words.
Quesenbery, Whitney. STC Usability SIG (2000). Articles>TC>Document Design>Usability
#30622
Write Once, Use Many: Why and How We Make Product Information Modular
Faced with growing demand from customers for specific courses, addressing only their needs, in very short time-frames, we had to re-examine the way we worked. Patching together one-shot customized coursework was labor-intensive for a non-homogeneous and unsatisfactory result. Each new customer request required repetition of the same amount of effort. With reduced turnaround time and dwindling human resources, a solution had to be found.
McClelland, Patricia J. and Alison Bourdel. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Documentation>Information Design>User Centered Design
#21709
XML provides a robust, non-proprietary, and verifiable file format for the storage and transmission of text and data both on and off the Web. XML removes the complexity of SGML, making it easier to define your own document types, and to write programs to handle them.
Bokil, Manoj. STC India (2003). Articles>Documentation>Information Design>XML
#31615
The XML train is finally pulling into the station. It brings an ocean change in the way we create, store, and manage information. In October of last year, Microsoft released Office 2003, which brings the promise of XML to the desktop. Previously, Word 2000 saved only the Properties of documents in an XML module in files converted to HTML. In this new edition, you can save or export all Office documents as XML documents. Using XML tags, we can now identify various elements of our documents for manipulation, storage, and retrieval as you would data in a data bank. It also enables us to more easily share information in those documents across other applications (including Web applications), networks, and operating systems.
DuBay, William H. Impact Information (2005). Articles>Document Design>XML>Microsoft Word
#29300
XML Paper Specification (XPS) of a Word 2003 Document
Microsoft breathed new life into legacy office documents by opening an XML window (Office Open XML) to its office products through its royalty-free XPS specification. XPS stands for XML Paper Specification that specifies cross-platform, open standard, document representation that can be used for generating, sharing, printing and archiving of paginated documents. Its virtues in Microsoft's own words are, "With XPS, documents print better, can be shared easier, be archived with confidence, and are more secure."
Krishnaswamy, Jayaram. ASPAlliance (2007). Articles>Document Design>XML>Microsoft Word
#24897
Your Document Covers the Facts, But Does It Keep ’Em Coming Back?
Much technical documentation merely describes the features or appearance of a product or service, leaving readers uninspired and disinterested. In fact, much of what we write probably never gets read. A combined audience, task, and benefits analysis can help us communicate why a user should do a task—not just how to do it.
Fritz, Anne, Jason R. Huntington, Bruce Knorr, and Judith Leetham. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Document Design>Usability
#32096
Structured Writing, Structured Documentation: What and Why?
A brief comparison of two often-confused concepts.
West, Mike. MBWest.com (2007). Articles>Documentation>Information Design
#32144
In my work with Bumblebee I use an approach I call 'User-Guide-Driven Development,' or UGDD for short. The mechanics of UGDD is similar to that of Test-Driven Development (TDD), but before I write the test for a feature, I write a snippet of the user guide describing the feature I am about to implement.
Brolund, Daniel. Thoughts of a Goldfish (2008). Articles>Documentation>Usability>User Centered Design
#32171
If you document everything, you are giving everything an equal weight. Do that for a complex system, and you are buried in detail. In any system there are some aspects that are more important than the others, key aspects of the system that once understood, will help someone to learn more. The art in documentation is to find how to document these aspects as clearly as possible. In this you emphasize these areas, and leave the details for the code.
Fowler, Martin. Distributed Computing (1997). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design>Minimalism
#32349
Users Read Help Manuals Like an Encyclopedia, Not a Novel
Users turn to help to look for a specific question, just as someone consults an encyclopedia for a specific question. No one reads the entire encyclopedia/manual, nor is anyone expected to. Well-written encyclopedias allow users to find information through indexes, tables of contents, alphabetical organization, and search fields.
Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2008). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design>Help
#32395
Blockquotes do have some styling by default. Most browsers will indent the text in a blockquote tag, which helps the user recognize that the text is different somehow. But who’s to say that we need to stop there? Here are six different ways you could style your blockquotes using CSS.
Glazebrook, Rob L. CSSnewbie (2008). Articles>Web Design>Document Design>CSS
#32405
Book-Style Chapter Introductions Using Pure CSS
Today’s tutorial will show you how easy it is to create book-style chapter (article, whatever) introductions using nothing but pure CSS — no XHTML was harmed in the making of this tutorial. We’ll use two types of selectors which I haven’t talked about yet here: adjacent sibling selectors and pseudo-element selectors. I’ll explain each type briefly before we get started.
Glazebrook, Rob L. CSSnewbie (2008). Articles>Web Design>Document Design>CSS
#32434
Every web designer should know and understand a Web site’s parameters before lifting a finger to start designing the site. In this article, you will learn the basics required to start designing business Web sites. While this information is useful if you want to build sites for others, it can also serve as a checklist article for sites you want to build for yourself.
Goin, Linda. Opera (2008). Articles>Web Design>Document Design>Information Design
#32504
How to Prevent HTML Tables from Becoming Too Wide
The layout model of tables differ from that of block level elements in that they will normally expand beyond their specified width to make their contents fit. At first that may sound like a good thing – and it often is – but it makes it possible for oversized content to make text unreadable or completely break a site’s layout, especially in Internet Explorer.
Johansson, Roger. 456 Berea Street (2007). Articles>Web Design>Document Design>HTML
#32540
Documenting User-Centered Design Best Practices
When initiating or expanding the role of user-centered design (UCD) in an organization, consider documenting UCD best practices as they fit within existing processes and the best practice of other areas. Such documentation communicates the role and value of UCD throughout the organization in terms familiar to your organization. Because what best practices means varies from company to company, there is no single way to do this. Here are some questions to consider.
Bachmann, Karen L. STC Proceedings (2008). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design>Policies and Procedures
#32560
Small Caps in InDesign CS3 and QuarkXPress 7
We previously discussed small caps and the importance of using true-drawn versions rather than computer-generated, “fake” ones. Many of today’s OpenType fonts include true-drawn small caps, making it easier than ever to take advantage of this typographically sophisticated feature, but the OpenType interface in both Adobe® InDesign® CS3 and QuarkXpress® 7 can be a bit confusing.
Strizver, Ilene. Upper and lowercase Magazine (2008). Articles>Document Design>Typography>Adobe InDesign
#32562
Hung Punctuation and Optical Margin Alignment
Even with all the technology at the disposal of today’s designers, in the end it’s what the human eye sees that counts. That’s why hung punctuation is one of the skills to master when you’re ready to add professional finesse to your typography. Learn what hung punctuation is and how to achieve it in the leading page layout applications.
Strizver, Ilene. Upper and lowercase Magazine (2008). Articles>Document Design>Typography
