Review: A Review of the Balsamiq Mockups wireframing application

This is a review for Balsamiq Mockups. This is a reasonably-priced application for creating wireframes that is easy to learn and use suitable for smaller projects. Creating interactive prototypes out of Balsamiq wireframes is now possible with the release of another application called Napkee. This review talks talks about: Balsamiq Mockup specifications; Balsamiq’s distinct visual character and how it work both in favor and against Balsamiq being adopted by users; Pros and cons of the application; and a conclusion with a recommendation on who should use and what to use Balsamiq Mockups for.

Rautela, Abhay. Cone Trees (2009). Articles>Reviews>Software>User Interface

Open-Source Software for Technical Writers

For companies that are struggling in the current times because of the economic slowdown, an option that might not compromise on product quality is to switch to open-source software. In this article, I will talk about open-source publishing tools for the writing community.

Dhodi, Harjot Singh. Indus (2009). Articles>Software>Technical Writing>Open Source

Learn Linux, 101: File and Directory Management

You've probably heard that everything in Linux is a file, so start on the right path with a solid grounding in file and directory management -- finding, listing, moving, copying, and archiving. You can use this material in this article to study for the LPI® 101 exam for Linux system administrator certification, or just to learn for fun.

Shields, Ian. IBM (2009). Articles>Software>Operating Systems>Linux

Choosing a Help Authoring Tool

Help authoring tools (HATs) are specialized editors and converters to create online technical documentation. Today, many help authoring tools also provide features for single source publishing, which means that you can generate several output formats and versions from one shared text source. While most tools manage to produce different online formats like browser-based help and compiled help very well, only few tools can also produce printed user manuals (or PDF) of professional quality. Big differences also exist between the tools when it comes to translating your projects into foreign languages.

Achtelig, Marc. indoition engineering. Articles>Documentation>Software>Help

Choosing a Screen Capture Tool

Checklist of key criteria for selecting a tool to take screen captures (screenshots / screen dumps). Screen captures are used within all forms of software documentation, such as user manuals, online help files, interactive demos and tutorials, but also for web sites and brochures.

Marc Achtelig. indoition engineering. Articles>Documentation>Software>Screen Captures

Choosing a Screencasting Tool

Checklist of key criteria for selecting a tool to create interactive software demos (so-called screencasts). Software demos are not only used on web sites but increasingly also as standalone tutorials or embedded within online help files and other sorts of software documentation.

Achtelig, Marc. indoition engineering (2009). Articles>Documentation>Software>Screencasting

Auswahl eines Help Authoring Tools

Checkliste der wichtigsten Kriterien für die Auswahl eines Tools zum Erstellen von Software-Dokumentation (Handbücher, Online-Hilfen) - sog. Help Authoring Tools, kurz HAT. Viele Help Authoring Tools können Benutzerhandbücher und Online-Hilfen aus einer gemeinsamen Textquelle heraus generieren (sog. Single Source Publishing).

Achtelig, Marc. indoition engineering. (German) Articles>TC>Software>Help

Marktüberblick Screencasting Tools

Marktüberblick über empfehlenswerte Tools zum Erstellen von Software-Demos (engl. Screencasts). Software-Demos werden nicht nur für Marketing-Zwecke auf Webseiten verwendet, sondern häufig auch als Ergänzung zur Technischen Dokumentation von Software: z.B. als eigenständiges Tutorial oder auch als integrativer Bestandteil einer Online-Hilfe oder sonstiger Software-Dokumentation.

Achtelig, Marc. indoition engineering. (German) Articles>Documentation>Software>Screencasting

Captioning Tools

Before looking at tools, please look at the DMCP Captioning Key to get familiar with captioning standards.

Creswell, Bill. WordPress (2009). Articles>Multimedia>Accessibility>Software

Word: Separate Out Macros and Attach Them to All Documents

I needed to make some macros available to all Word documents I opened. I wouldn’t need the macros for every document, but I would need them for many documents. The documents I was working on used different templates, so adding the macro to each template was not an option.

CyberText Consulting (2009). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

VoiceOver and Safari: Screen Reading on the Mac

One of the most interesting features of Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger, the newest version of Apple's operating system, is VoiceOver, a built-in screen reader. Up until now, people needing a screen reader have been more or less forced to use Windows because of the lack of decent screen reader software for the Mac, but now it's built right into the Mac OS.

456 Berea Street (2007). Articles>Accessibility>Software>Macintosh

To the Man With a Hammer Everything Looks Like a Nail

An engineer at a company once called me and asked me how much it would cost to edit a Service Manual that he had written for a medical device. I asked him to send it to me so that I could give him a quote. When I received it I saw to my amazement and horror that he had written a 200 page manual (including many graphics) in Excel. When I asked him why he didn't use Word, he replied 'I'm an engineer I know how to use Excel, not Word.'

Hurwitz, Charles. Freelance Technical Writing in Israel (2009). Articles>Documentation>Freelance>Software

Adobe FrameMaker: Troubleshooting Unavailable Fonts

I never like opening up a FrameMaker document and getting the dreaded unavailable fonts dialog box. Sadly, with multiple authors who contribute documents to me from around the world, it's just a fact of life that I see the dialog box frequently.

Binder, Barbara. I Came, I Saw, I Learned (2009). Articles>Typography>Software>Adobe FrameMaker

Setting Up Photoshop For Web, App and iPhone Development

Most people who have designed websites or apps in Photoshop will, at one point or another, have had issues trying to match colors in images to colors generated by HTML, CSS or code. This article aims to solve those problems once and for all.

Edwards, Marc. Smashing (2009). Articles>Graphic Design>Software>Adobe Photoshop

Active Open Source Translation Tool Projects

I don’t intend to give a complete project list. I just chose some projects that might be interesting enough to people from localization industry based on two criteria: 1. The features are useful for language service providers (LSP). 2. The development status is Stable or Mature. In other words, it is ready for real production use from the view of development cycle.

Dickson, Vic. Better Localization (2005). Articles>Software>Translation>Open Source

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

Plone vs. SharePoint, Round 2: A By-Platform Feature Comparison

An organization we at Reflab work with recently re-evaluated Plone against Sharepoint 2007; their main requirements are related to document management, where Sharepoint is for sure quite strong. What’s interesting is that they made the comparison also considering the different platforms and browsers their organization uses. Here are the results of their analysis and tests, they where so kind to share them with us, I checked them and translated them. I hope you’ll find them useful.

Ciriaci, Francesco. WordPress (2009). Articles>Content Management>Software>Plone

PowerPoint Frustrates Student

I'm not a fan of PowerPoint. I've sat through too many deadly dull presentations by people who didn't know how to make a presentation interesting. So it saddens me to find out that universities have been infected by the PowerPoint virus. At least the students will be prepared for the real world when they graduate.

Soltys, Keith. Core Dump (2009). Articles>Presentations>Software

Improving Software Usability Through Embedded User Assistance

Integrating user assistance into the software interface is one of the best ways to increase the usability of your software application and thus make your customers more satisfied and successful. However, embedded help has the reputation of being difficult to develop and execute. Let’s take a look at a solution that makes it possible to quickly include an embedded, dynamic help pane in a software interface.

Bleiel, Nicky. TC World (2009). Articles>Usability>Software>Help

Using Expression Blend to Explore, Demonstrate, and Document Design Solutions

For the last 6 months, I have been using Microsoft Expression Blend as my primary design tool. Blend, shown in Figure 1, is quickly becoming a powerful product. Its new Sketchflow module had me at hello.

Silver, Kevin. UXmatters (2009). Articles>Graphic Design>Software

Tutorial: Turning WordPress into a CMS using WPML

WordPress is fairly simple to set up as a CMS ‘out of the box’, but where it needs a lot of customization is for setting up ‘smart’ navigation and being able to serve up pages or posts in multiple languages.

Life @ iStudio (2009). Articles>Content Management>Software>WordPress

Ten Things to Consider Before Choosing an LMS

Over the years I have spent many hours testing content and trying various different Learning Management Systems, and have even done some LMS (like) design work with Articulate Online. Over that time period I have had the opportunity to learn a lot about what does work well, and what doesn’t work well in a lot of systems, so based on my knowledge on the subject, here is my list 10 things to consider before choosing in an LMS.

Mozealous, Dave. Mozealous.com (2009). Articles>Education>Online>Software

Top Five Best Database Management Tools

For a database administrator, DBM (database management) tools make tasks related to maintaining relational databases efficient and fast. Prior to the popularity of these tools, most DBA’s had to use the command line to create, edit, and delete databases. In this article, we present to you the top five most popular/most voted for database management tools.

Gube, Jacob. Six Revisions (2009). Articles>Information Design>Software>Databases

Writing Great Documentation: What to Write

Tech docs can take a bunch of different forms ranging from high-level overviews, to step-by-step walkthroughs, to auto-generated API documentation. Unfortunately, no single format works for all users; there’s huge differences in the way that people learn, so a well-documented project needs to provide many different forms of documentation.

Kaplan-Moss, Jacob. Jacobian (2009). Articles>Documentation>Technical Writing>Software

Seven Website Mockup Tools

I am working on a number of website projects right now. My mission is to banish ‘lorem ipsum’ by working text into page designs before development starts. I wanted to find a tool that would let me create page mockups quickly and try out different combinations of copy and layout. Eventually, I settled on Balsamiq Mockups, which is an awesome tool. The rest of this article describes the different alternatives I considered and concludes with a detailed review of Balsamiq.

Stibbe, Matthew. Bad Language (2009). Articles>Web Design>Prototyping>Software