Voice Portals  

Perlin discusses the latest developments in voice portal technology.

Perlin, Neil E. Intercom (2002). Articles>Technology>Software>Voice

Wearer of Many Hats

We currently use a variety of software and hardware tools to do our work. Unfortunately, there isn't one perfect software package that does everything we need.

Peterson, Carol. Boston Broadside (1992). Articles>TC>Software

Web Indexing: Extending the Functionality of HTML Indexer

HTML Indexer is a commercial stand-alone indexing tool that is designed solely for the indexing of web sites. This article shows how to extend the functionality of HTML Indexer by including special codes in the entries, then post-processing the generated HTML to obtain final HTML.

Unwalla, Mike. TechScribe (2006). Articles>Web Design>Indexing>Software

Web zu PDF

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

Web-Based Alternatives to PowerPoint

Presentation software has been stuck in neutral forever. Web applications, however, are firing on all cylinders. Some say Word and Excel are about to be Web 2.0 roadkill. Not me. The browser can’t yet substitute for those applications. But for PowerPoint? Any day now.

Udell, Jon. InfoWorld (2006). Articles>Presentations>Software>Web Design

WebWorks Publisher: Jumping into the Details  

Desprez illuminates some of the advanced features of Quadralay's WebWorks Publisher, a software package that allows single-sourcing from Adobe FrameMaker to online documents. For a discussion of WebWorks tailored to beginners, see Wendy G. Beren's article 'WebWorks Publisher: Can It Convert You?'

Desprez, Robert R. Intercom (2001). Articles>Content Management>Software>Adobe FrameMaker

What Can Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Really Recognize?  

A handout describing the process and possibilities of optical character recognition systems.

Ford, Donna A. Write On Design (2001). Articles>Software>Scanning>OCR

What Do All Those Funny Marks, Like the Dots Between the Words in My Document and the Square Bullets in the Left Margin Mean?

Occasionally a new user of Word is alarmed to discover that his previously pristine document is full of strange symbols – dots, arrows, paragraphs marks, and the like. For experienced users, the usual reaction of such a user seems almost comical because experienced users know how invaluable the display of nonprinting characters can be both in formatting and in troubleshooting documents.

Barnhill, Suzanne and Dave Rado. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

What Is Open Source Software And Is It Usable?

Open Source Software (OSS) is a software project where all the source code is freely available, usually according to a licensing agreement baring commercial gain on the source. The contributors to the project are usually part-time computing enthusiasts with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. Usability specialists are not generally part of the development process.

Watkins, Robert. Usability Professionals Association (2001). Articles>Usability>Open Source>Software

What Is RoboHelp?

RoboHelp is an authoring tool sold by eHelp Corporation (formerly Blue Sky Software). In an easy 'WYSIWYG' format, it allows you to organize information and create pathways and interactive links so a user can find desired or necessary information (and the user can do so in a non-linear intuitive way that is helpful to learning).

UMBC (2000). Articles>Documentation>Software>Adobe RoboHelp

What It Takes to Document America’s Best-Selling Tax Software  

Because both the TurboTax Deluxe software program and the federal tax code are redesigned every year, preparing TurboTax Deluxe’s raft of documentation demands a management approach that emphasizes planning, teamwork, task dependencies, and an elusive mix offlexibility and clearly defined project ownership.

Johnson, Mark A. and Karen Cangialosi. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Documentation>Software

What Word Tries to Do for You  

Word performs many behind-the-scenes actions that some people hate and some people love. You already learned about AutoRecover, which saves files in the background every few minutes. Word offers three other big automated features: AutoCorrect, Smart Cut and Paste, and background spelling and grammar check.

Glenn, Walter. O'Reilly and Associates (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

What's Wrong with Today's Technical Communication Tools?  

The software tools we use often seem not well suited to the tasks we ask them to perform. Workarounds seem to be the norm at times. We expect to gather your comments in this discussion session and use them to write a ï¿white paperï¿ to be offered to Technical Communication as an article. We hope developers of our tools use our comments to improve the next round of releases.

Elser, Arthur G., JoAnn T. Hackos and Dawn M. Stevens. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>TC>Software

When Word-XML Conversions Get Nasty

One of the first hurdles facing any major content or document management implementation is what to do with legacy documents.  Chances are, many or most of those documents reside in Microsoft Word format, but enterprises often want to get them into a more open format, like XML.  This is particularly the case for STM (Scientific, Technical, Medical) publishing, where you find complicated -- but highly structured -- information along with tantalizingly attractive re-use opportunities.  But it is also true for everyday corporate documents as well.

Gross, Michael. CMSwatch (2004). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

Why Can't All Our Tools Be This Easy To Use?

Two years ago, a rather disconcerting thing happened to Mike Dunn, president and CEO of PolyVision, one of the world's leading manufacturers of electronic whiteboards. From his office Dunn could see into the meeting room across the hall, where one of the company's large-format whiteboards was mounted on the wall. What Dunn observed (or didn't) was that even though meetings were going on all the time, the whiteboard itself hardly ever got used. When he asked his staff why, they responded a bit sheepishly that the whiteboard was too much of a hassle to set up. Nobody wanted to go through the bother of up hooking their computer to it, and to use the board's interactive features, they'd have to bring in a projector as well. It wasn't worth the trouble, they confessed. This is not the sort of feedback the president of a company that makes electronic whiteboards likes to hear. In response, Dunn dedicated a computer to the whiteboard and installed a permanent projector in the room. Then he himself tried to give a presentation using this same equipment, the benefits of which his sales force was busily touting in the field. After 20 minutes of futzing he gave up – and had an epiphany instead. 'I thought, if the president of the company can't get his own products to work, what chance does the average person on the street have of getting them to work?' recalls Dunn. His conclusion: Almost no chance at all.

Simons, Tad. Presentations (2003). Articles>Usability>Software

Why Free IT Management Tools are Gaining Traction

Free software has penetrated close to three-quarters of all multi-billion dollar corporations and growth continues steadily. Industry research confirms that the primary reason IT organizations purchase free software solutions is the opportunity to reduce costs and improve technology performance. While leading products such as Linux, Apache and MySQL have generated the most attention, free software tools for IT management such as Nagios have matured and are poised for mainstream adoption.

Winkelstein, Will. Free Software Magazine (2005). Articles>Software>Open Source

Why Master Documents Corrupt

The complete explanation would be a book in itself. For now, it is enough to know that a Word document is a great big 'list' of objects. An object can be anything you can put in a Word document. Each of these objects has many, many 'properties' that determine how it appears and how it behaves.

McGhie, John. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

Why Software Applications Need Product Blogs, and Why They Don't Get Them

I'm convinced that even internal software, which never sees the light of WWW, still needs a blog as much or more than products sold online. Even so, numerous corporate restrictions, standards, and culture will present seemingly insurmountable barriers to blogs.

Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2008). Articles>Documentation>Software>Blogging

Why Wise Users May Not Read Computer Documentation  

Wise computer users may not read documentation because they do not have time to read all the material that is shipped with software products and because the useful lifetime of documentation is so short. This proposition is supported by statistics for a sample of manuals for typical commercial software.

Krull, Robert. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Documentation>Software

Will Macromedia's Flash Plans Cripple the Web?

Macromedia's Flash-everywhere approach brings new innovations to Web design but carries hidden potential liabilities that could negate its benefits.

Becker, David. ZDNet (1997). Articles>Web Design>Software>Flash

Winword-Probleme lösen

Mit diesem Thema wurden schon ganze Bücher gefüllt. Machen wir's hier etwas bescheidener und konzentrieren wir uns auf einige ganz grundlegende Beobachtungen. Sofern nichts anderes dabei steht, stammen die Erfahrungen von Winword 97.

von Obert, Alexander. Techwriter.de (2003). (German) Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

Wireframe Annotations in Visio

Few information architects tap the full power of Visio. For the IA, Visio is a means to an end—a mechanism for capturing some ideas on paper before they are transformed into graphics, HTML, and code.

Brown, Dan. Boxes and Arrows (2004). Articles>Information Design>Software>Visio

With All This Fuss About Tools, Three Best Practice Attitudes

Although tools seem to play a significant role in technical authoring, some people disagree. Embrace tool learning. Recognize that the 'best tool' is relative. Expose knowledge gaps.

Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2008). Articles>TC>Advice>Software