Unwebbable

It’s time we came to grips with the fact that not every “document” can be a “web page.” Some forms of writing just cannot be expressed in HTML—or they need to be bent and distorted to do so. But for once, XML might actually help.

Clark, Joe. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Web Design>Document Design>XML

Calling Accessible Context-Sensitive Help with Unobtrusive DOM/JavaScript: A Help Authoring Guide

This Fast Track tutorial demonstrates two methods to call Context-Sensitive Help in a Web Form. We'll discover how Unobtrusive DOM/JavaScript achieves the desired result in calling Context-Sensitive help, and demonstrate how to keep the Structure, Presentation, and Behavior layers of a web page completely separate from one another ensuring good practice with current web standards and accessibility rules.

Palinkas, Frank M. helpware.net (2009). Articles>Web Design>Documentation>Help

Web 2.0, and Me

As help systems continue to evolve, whatever name they are called, we will increasingly have to face responsibility for their content, and bring their expertise to what we write. The new systems provide us with all the required tools that tell us the problems with their content. It is up to us to leverage that information to provide better content, and act as ambassadors for products that we write. If writers can go a step ahead, and use their help information to sell products, and reduce the burden on customer support, we would have truly arrived.

Kurnool, Preran. Indus (2009). Articles>Web Design>Documentation>Help

A Strident Defense of Mediocre Formatting

Formatting automation removes cost from the process of creating and delivering content. For technical documents that change often and are perhaps delivered in multiple languages, it removes a lot of cost. Essentially, we can produce documents inexpensively and give more people access to them as a direct result of lower cost, or we can climb on our typographic high horse and whine about word spacing. I’m with the noisome fanboys.

O'Keefe, Sarah S. Scriptorium (2009). (Afrikaans) Articles>Document Design>Typography>Minimalism

Duct Tape Technical Writers

In reality, the user just wants a brief, clear explanation of a concept or task. The user will glance and skim — reading behaviors hardly worthy of the elitist grammarian who argues the finer points of “which” versus “that” in restrictive clauses.

Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2009). Articles>Document Design>Technical Writing>Minimalism

Adobe FrameMaker: Refining the Type Size List

The sizes listed in the picture above are the default type sizes listed in FrameMaker's Paragraph and Character Designers. If your favorite choices are listed, great! If not, you have to type the size you want into the Size field. If you'd like to modify the Size list so that it includes your favorite Sizes, read on.

Binder, Barbara. Blogs.com (2009). Articles>Document Design>Typography>Adobe FrameMaker

What do the Users Really Want?

I have no idea what our users want. I do know they want information, and I know they want that information to be kept up to date as our product evolves and as far as those basic needs are concerned, I’m happy that we are meeting them. Beyond that I admit I’m not really that sure.

McLean, Gordon. One Man Writes (2009). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design>Surveys

Form and Function, Revisited

While I'm a firm believer in the primacy of content over appearance, aesthetics are definitely a part of drawing people into documentation and engaging them. There's nothing wrong with making online assistance or a printed manual attractive. It doesn't need to be a beautifully-designed work of art, but it should be something a little more than blocks of black text on a white page.

Nesbitt, Scott. DMN Communications (2009). Articles>Documentation>Document Design

Ten Pre-Press Tips For Perfect Print Publishing

A lot of designers think CMYK is the way to go when designing for print. We will, of course, always use CMYK-based ink, but this does not mean you have to work with CMYK files. You can work with RGB images to perfectly optimize your print colors.

Kramer, Marco. Smashing (2009). Articles>Document Design>Prepress>Printing

Printing and Prepress Basics

While art and design schools do an impressive job of teaching the importance of form, function, and how to use flashy Photoshop techniques, it's rare that designers have been taught the skills necessary to pass off their projects to printers so that they may not only successfully, but smoothly, produce a designed work. In this article, I'll discuss the basics when it comes to translating your brilliant ideas (and surely hours of your precious time and energy) into successfully printed projects with a printer, making it easier to keep your deadlines and maintain a blissfully happy and healthy relationship with your vendor.

Stanley, Brandi. Tuts Plus (2009). Articles>Document Design>Prepress>Printing

Text Wrap and Text Formatting in InDesign

The most frequently asked questions I get from people who are new to InDesign revolves around Text Wrap; however, there are also questions about text formatting that don’t get asked. But I know they exist because when I’m presenting in front of an audience and I start formatting text, I can see the look of amazement on some folks’ faces as if they’re thinking, “Hey, I didn’t know you could do that!”

White, Terry. Layers Magazine (2009). Articles>Document Design>Typography>Adobe InDesign

Conditional Text and InDesign CS4

InDesign has always supported the use of layers, but layers don’t always cut it when working with text. You can put a text frame on a layer and turn that layer on and off as needed, but it’s an all or nothing approach. What if you want to show and hide individual words or paragraphs and have the text automatically rewrap when you show or hide those words? With conditional text, it’s a breeze.

White, Terry. Layers Magazine (2009). Articles>Document Design>Single Sourcing>Adobe InDesign

Fast Layout in Adobe InDesign CS4

Every now and then an app gets an update that really impacts your daily routine, and I’m happy to say that InDesign CS4 has some new-and-improved features that will do just that. InDesign is a page layout app, so anything that helps that process is a welcome addition, so let’s take a look at how CS4 will speed up your day-to-day work.

White, Terry. Layers Magazine (2009). Articles>Document Design>Workflow>Adobe InDesign

Adobe FrameMaker: Custom Master Pages

New FrameMaker documents have default Master Pages. Single-sided documents have one, called "Right," and double-sided documents have two, called "Left" and "Right." We use these pages to place the objects we want to repeat on all the Body Pages, things like our running heads, page numbers and repeating graphics. But what do you do when you need a different look for a Body Page, on a repeating basis? For example, no page number on the opening page of each chapter? You set up a custom master page. Here's how.

Binder, Barbara. Blogs.com (2009). Articles>Document Design>Software>Adobe FrameMaker

How Apple’s Setup Guide Shows That It Thinks Different

Seth Godin believes that everything reflects what you stand for—right down to your technical documents. Ever looked at Apple’s tech docs?

Godin, Seth. I Heart Tech Docs (2009). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design>Macintosh

Layout of Japanese Documents

In order to provide guidance to those involved in the preparation of documents for the Japanese market, a special Japanese layout taskforce has developed the “Requirements for Japanese Text Layout”. Here is an insight into the content.

Graham, Tony. TC World (2009). Articles>Document Design>Localization>Japan

What Information Developers Can Learn from Software Developers

The shift in information development from a narrative to a modular writing style reflects the established shift towards modularization of source code. What can information developers learn from software developers? What are the challenges and benefits of the modular approach?

Higgins, Paul. TC World (2009). Articles>Information Design>Content Management>Documentation

How to Change 100 Screenshots to the Same Size with a Single Click

All the screenshots in your Word document are different sizes. What’s the quickest way to get them all the same size? Is there a shortcut? Yes!

Walsh, Ivan. I Heart Tech Docs (2009). Articles>Document Design>Image Editing>Microsoft Word

Easy Fixes for Microsoft Word Formatting in InDesign

Two free and easy-to-use scripts convert Word's local formatting to InDesign's character styles. Two more retain InDesign formatting when you export text formatted with automatically applied character styles.

Concepcion, Anne-Marie. Creative Pro (2009). Articles>Document Design>Microsoft Word>Adobe InDesign

LaTeX, Content, and Structure

LaTeX (pronounced lay-tek) is a document markup and preparation system that has a long history in academia and scientific research. But it has a number of other uses, too. Including my project.

Nesbitt, Scott. DMN Communications (2009). Articles>Document Design>TeX>LaTeX

Access is Good

Yesterday we launched a new version of our developer community website. It doesn’t have many ‘community’ features as yet but that’s all to come. One thing it does now have is an HTML version of all of our product documentation, in an easily searchable format. This new format of the product documentation is largely to move us away from PDF only documentation. At present we still have a set of PDFs but they aren’t particularly usable.

McLean, Gordon. One Man Writes (2009). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Documentation

Smart Running Heads

One of the FrameMaker features I rely on heavily for my technical documents is the use of "live" headers and footers. Once I get them set up, they will automatically pull text off of my page into the running heads so that the reader can quickly see what chapter they are in, or what section, or both. I accomplish this through the use of System Variables.

Binder, Barbara. I Came, I Saw, I Learned (2009). Articles>Document Design>Style Sheets>Adobe FrameMaker

Take a Breath Already!

One very important concept in any area of design, including interface design, is that of space. What is space? Well, obviously we aren’t talking about needing any kind of extended astronomical knowledge; space is the area with which we choose to do things. Today we will talk about this area in many different ways.

Cutrell, Jonathan. Fuel Your Interface (2009). Articles>User Interface>Document Design>User Centered Design

Eight Awesome Things That CSS3 Will Do

A lot of attention is being directed at HTML 5 and how awesome it is, but CSS 3 has just as many cool features which will make our lives easier as web developers and designers. Below I’ve outlined 8 of the coolest new things coming to a browser near you, or that has already been partially implemented into some browsers.

Webtint (2009). Articles>Web Design>Document Design>CSS

Acrobat 9: Making Search Easy

The Search command is NOT part of the default tools layout, therefore severely reducing the chance that a casual PDF 'consumer' will use the more powerful Search command. Here's a cool trick that will greatly increase the likelihood that one of your customers will call on the Search command: you'll put it right in their hands.

Mankin, David R. I Came, I Saw, I Learned (2009). Articles>Document Design>Search>Adobe Acrobat