Books

Technological Ecologies and Sustainability

In the chapters of this anthology, contributing authors approach technological ecologies and sustainability from a variety of angles.

TCP/IP Tutorial and Technical Overview

The TCP/IP protocol suite has become the de facto standard for computer communications in today's networked world. The ubiquitous implementation of a specific networking standard has led to an incredible dependence on the applications enabled by it. Today, we use the TCP/IP protocols and the Internet not only for entertainment and information, but to conduct our business by performing transactions, buying and selling products, and delivering services to customers. We are continually extending the set of applications that leverage TCP/IP, thereby driving the need for further infrastructure support. It is our hope that both the novice and the expert will find useful information in this publication.

Understanding LDAP: Design and Implementation

The implementation and exploitation of centralized, corporate-wide directories are among the top priority projects in most organizations. The need for a centralized directory emerges as organizations realize the overhead and cost involved in managing the many distributed micro and macro directories introduced in the past decade with decentralized client/server applications and network operating systems. This IBM Redbook will help you create a foundation of LDAP skills, as well as install and configure the IBM Directory Server. It is targeted at security architects and specialists who need to know the concepts and the detailed instructions for a successful LDAP implementation.

Genre in a Changing World

Genre studies and genre approaches to literacy instruction continue to develop in many regions and from a widening variety of approaches. Genre has provided a key to understanding the varying literacy cultures of regions, disciplines, professions and educational settings. Genre in a Changing World provides a wide-ranging sampler of the remarkable variety of current work. The twenty-four chapters in this volume, reflecting the work of scholars in Europe, Australasia, North and South America, were selected from the over 400 presentations at SIGET IV (the Fourth International Symposium on Genre Studies) held on the campus of UNISUL in Tubarão, Santa Catarina, Brazil in August 2007 — the largest gathering on genre to that date. The chapters also represent a wide variety of approaches including rhetoric, Systemic Functional Linguistics, media and critical cultural studies, sociology, phenomenology, enunciation theory, the Geneva school of educational sequences, cognitive psychology, relevance theory, sociocultural psychology, activity theory, Gestalt psychology, and schema theory. Sections are devoted to theoretical issues, studies of genres in the professions, studies of genre and media, teaching and learning genre, and writing across the curriculum. The broad selection of material in this volume displays the full range of contemporary genre studies and sets the ground for a next generation of work.

Engineering Software for Accessibility

If a majority of your users could benefit from your product being accessible, doesn’t it just make sense to build an accessible product? If you have decided to do so, you are sending a message to your customers that their needs matter. Populations in many countries are getting older. Civil rights for people with disabilities are gradually being extended to encompass digital inclusion. Governments are requiring procurement officials to purchase products that are the most accessible (mandated in the U.S. by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act). For technology producers, creating accessible products is just the right thing to do, and it makes good business sense.

Photoshop CS4 Help Guide

The official Adobe Reference guide is available online and in PDF form. While not exactly a “quick” reference guide, it is essential for anyone who uses Photoshop professionally.

Un/Commonplaces: Redirecting Research and Curricula in Rhetoric and Writing Studies

This project examines commonplace notions of text and intertextuality, the idea that “writing is recursive,” the disciplinary identification and preoccupation with composition rather than writing, and the historical privileging of pedagogy over (and often in lieu of) curriculum development. In tracing these commonplaces, I also work to establish new directions for our research that are sometimes grounded in our own, often overlooked disciplinary theory, while also moving outside of the humanities in search of cross-disciplinary collaboration.

Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK) 1.6

The Business Analysis Body of Knowledge is the sum of knowledge within the profession of Business Analysis and reflects what is considered currently accepted practice. As with other professions, the body of knowledge is defined and enhanced by the business analysis professionals who apply it. The BOK describes Business Analysis areas of knowledge, their associated activities and tasks and the skills necessary to be effective in their execution.

The Mobile Generation: Global Transformations at the Cellular Level

People are constantly innovating in the use ofmobile technologies to allow them to be more interconnected. Almost a half century ago, Ralph Lee Smith conjured up “The Wired Nation,”foretelling a world of interactive communication to and from the home that seems commonplace in developed countries today. Now we have a “Wireless World” of communications potentially connecting two billion people to each other with interactive personal communications devices.

Identity in the Age of Cloud Computing: The Next-Generation Internet’s Impact on Business, Governance and Social Interaction

Coming after decades of increased capacity and expectations from the desktop at the network’s edge, the burgeoning acceptance of the cloud as a way of doing business raises a number of interesting and important questions for the broader public. What control do we have over our identities, security, and privacy? How will it change economic and business models? What are the implications for governance and cyber-security?

Civic Engagement on the Move: How Mobile Media Can Serve the Public Good

Many people—especially youth and the previously disempowered—are learning to use cell phone messages, snapshots and videos as a way to express their political views. Certainly that was being demonstrated by the thousands of young people and others drawn into the 2008 Presidential primary campaign.

Twitter: Expressions of the Whole Self

Twitter.com is a web-based communications platform combining Instant Messaging and SMS that enables subscribers to its service to send short ‘status updates’ to other people. Beyond its hybrid platform, Twitter’s unique feature is its overarching question “What are you doing?”, which acts as a ‘guidance note’ on how users should phrase their postings. Although it is a ‘soft restriction’, meaning that other formats and styles are possible, this study investigates the extent to which users of Twitter are responding to the question.

GNOME Handbook of Writing Software Documentation

The GNOME Documentation Project (GDP) aims to provide GNOME and GNOME applications with a complete, intuitive, and clear documentation system. At the center of the GDP is Yelp, which presents a unified interface to GNOME-specific documentation as well as other Linux documentation such as man pages and texinfo documents. The GNOME Help System provides a comprehensive view of documentation on a machine by dynamically assembling the documentation of GNOME applications and components which are installed.

TWIN eBook Volume 1

A compilation of some of the useful messages posted on TWIN from 1997 through 2002, in Microsoft CHM format (for some reason). These messages are classified into different topic areas, such as Tools, Career-Related, Best Practices, Grammar, etc.

Understanding Metadata

Metadata is structured information that describes, explains, locates, or otherwise makes it easier to retrieve, use, or manage an information resource. Metadata is often called data about data or information about information.

Thoughts on Interaction Design

It is the primary goal of this text to better define Interaction Design: to provide a definition that encompasses the intellectual facets of the field, the conceptual underpinnings of Interaction Design as a legitimate human-centered field, and the particular methods used by practitioners in their day to day experiences.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Guidelines

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an approach that addresses and redresses the primary barrier to making expert learners of all students: inflexible, one-size-fits-all curricula that raise unintentional barriers to learning. Learners with disabilities are most vulnerable to such barriers, but many students without disabilities also find that curricula are poorly designed to meet their learning needs.

DITA Specialization

This area provides access to my DITA specialization tutorial and other DITA specialization-related information and materials.

Writing for The Web #1

This free 35-page guide outlines seven challenges every writer and copywriter faces when writing for the Web.

Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications

Understanding the user interface can be a confusing experience for customers. By using a consistent set of terminology and style, you can help customers navigate the product user interface successfully. Once customers become familiar with this system, they can jump seamlessly between content about different products.

A DocBook Basics and References

DocBook is an easy-to-understand and widely used DTD. Dozens of organizations use DocBook for millions of pages of documentation, in various print and online formats, worldwide.

Instructional System Design

This process provides a means for sound decision making to determine the who, what, when, where, why, and how of training. The concept of a system approach to training is based on obtaining an overall view of the training process. It is characterized by an orderly process for gathering and analyzing collective and individual performance requirements, and by the ability to respond to identified training needs. The application of a systems approach to training insures that training programs and the required support materials are continually developed in an effective and efficient manner to match the variety of needs in an ever rapidly changing environment.

Typologia: Studies in Type Design and Type Making

Describes from start to finish the designing of a type and the details of making that type--beginning with the designer's mental attitude and ending with the printed sheet, illustrating each step as graphically as possible.

Screen Captures 102

An introduction to generating screen captures from Microsoft Windows computers. Consider your deliverables; where is the screen capture going to be used and seen by the customer? This helps you determine how you need to create your screen capture.

Reusable Information Object Strategy: Definition, Creation Overview, and Guidelines

Cisco Systems recognizes a need to move from creating and delivering large inflexible training courses, to database driven objects that can be reused, searched, and modified independent of their delivery media. This effort is called the Reusable Information Object Strategy. This strategy defines the standards and process for designing and developing Reusable Information Objects (RIOs) at Cisco Systems.

Issues of Saliency and Recognition in the Search for Web Page Bookmarks

Describes the effect of bookmark naming on bookmark recognition. The purpose was to provide empirically-determined guidelines for web producers on how to title pages in order to optimise the recognition of bookmarks by users, and to increase the rate of revisitation as a result.

Digitising History: A Guide to Creating Digital Resources from Historical Documents

This guide is intended as a reference work for individuals and organisations involved with, or planning, the computerisation of historical source documents. It aims to recommend good practice and standards that are generic and relevant to a range of data creation situations, from student projects through to large-scale research projects.

Scientific and Technical Communication: Theory, Practice, and Policy (Digital Edition)

Scientific and technical communication can be defined as a process of gathering, organizing, presenting and refining information. It is also a process of persuasion which often appeals to objectivity to convince an audience. Finally, it is a process inevitably shaped by its contexts, and which is improved when it recognizes its contexts.

TechComm Web

This site provides additional materials for every chapter and directs students and instructors to the best Web resources available in technical communication.

A Theory of Presentation and its Implications for the Design of Online Technical Documentation

This study proposes a theory of presentation and discusses its implications for the design of online technical documentation. The theory is based on an investigation of how professional service engineers use technical documents relating to the oil system of a commercial aircraft engine. A second source was the design and evaluation of a novel hypermedia document system, the cinegram, which constitutes the practical part of the submission. The cinegram prototype uses animated diagrams and other media to show processes within an aircraft engine’s oil system.

AAA Accessibilità Cercasi

Fare Accessibilità significa avere delle conoscenze tecniche, avere dimestichezza con Standard e Raccomandazioni del W3C. Ma non solo. Significa conoscere il target dell´Accessibilità, erroneamente ed ingenuamente precluso ai soli disabili. Significa conoscere chi sono le persone disabili, che prima di essere disabili, sono Persone. Sono coloro che vivono sulla propria pelle ogni giorno le conseguenze di scelte strategiche sbagliate di coloro che hanno il potere, con un sì o con un no, di creare o abbattere le barriere tecnologiche che ostacolano il libero accesso alle informazioni ed ai servizi online.

E-Banking: Quando il Servizio non è Accessibile

La zona di confine tra normalità e disabilità è una delle più permeabili, soprattutto quando, come oggi, l'invecchiamento crescente della popolazione è messo a dura prova da una continua rincorsa ad apprendere e padroneggiare sempre nuove tecnologie di accesso ai servizi. L'e-book di Patrizia Bertini e Marco Trevisan non arriva per caso nell'Anno del Disabile. È frutto di un interesse di lunga data e di un sistematico lavoro di ricerca per rendere visibili e quindi superabili le barriere più insidiose, quelle dell'informazione. In particolare, quelle barriere che continuano a impedire l'accesso di tutti ai servizi bancari automatizzati (ATM/Bancomat) e ai servizi in rete (e-banking).

Data Recovery Book 1.0

This book introduces the construction of hard disk, the theory of data saving, construction of file system, the reasons of data lost and the examples of data recovery in detail. This book is easy to understand with a lot of graphs and pictures in it. With the help of it, the general user will never be upset of data lost. It also enable you to become a data recovery expert quickly.

Euro 2002 Information Campaign: Analysis and Evaluation of the National Advertising Campaigns

This research is aimed at analysing the mass media information campaigns carried out for the introduction of the Euro.

Affrontare l'Accessibilità

Questo libro risponde a due domande. La prima è "Perchè dovrei rendere più accessibile il mio sito?" E se non avete un sito web, questo libro non è per voi. La seconda domanda è "Come posso rendere il mio sito più accessibile?" Se non siete convinti della vostra prima risposta, non sarete di certo interessati alla seconda.

Kast deg ut i Tilgjengelighet

Denne boka vil besvare to spørsmål. Det første spørsmålet er «Hvorfor bør jeg gjøre nettstedet mitt mer tilgjengelig?» Om du ikke har et nettsted, så er ikke denne boka for deg. Det andre spørsmålet er «Hvordan kan jeg gjøre nettstedet mitt mer tilgjengelig?» Er du ikke overbevist av svaret på det første spørsmålet, vil du nok ikke være interessert i det andre.

Plongez dans l'Accessibilité

Ce livre répond à deux questions. La première question est Pourquoi je dois rendre mon site web plus accessible ? Si vous n'avez pas de sites web, ce livre n'est pas pour vous. La seconde question est Comment puis-je rendre mon site web plus accessible ? Si vous n'êtes pas convaincu par la première réponse, vous ne serez pas interessé par la seconde.

W głąb Dostępności

Niniejsza książka odpowiada na dwa pytania. Pierwsze brzmi: 'Dlaczego powinienem uczynić swoją stronę WWW bardziej dostępną?' Jeżeli nie masz strony w sieci, ta książka nie jest dla Ciebie. Drugie pytanie to 'Jak mogę uczynić moją stronę bardziej dostępną?' Jeżeli nie zostaniesz przekonany przez odpowiedź na pierwsze pytanie, nie będziesz zainteresowany odpowiedzią na drugie.

もっとアクセシブルなサイトにする30日計画

この文書は2つの質問に答えるために書いてみたんだ。 1コ目は、「なんでサイトをアクセシブルにした方がいいのか」。だから、ここの情報はサイトを持ってない人には向かないかも。 2コ目は、「じゃどうしたらサイトをアクセシブルにできるのか」。 1コ目の答えが納得できるものじゃなかったら、2コ目はどうでもいいってことになるよね。

在 30 天內打造更具親和力的網站

這本書要回答兩個問題：第一個問題是「為什麼該讓我的網站更具親和力？」如果妳根本就沒有網站的話，顯然就不會成為本書的讀者了。第二個問題是「該如何讓我的網站更具親和力？」如果第一個問題的回答說服不了妳，那麼第二個問題大概也將無法引起妳的興趣。

Advanced Techniques for Creating Accessible Adobe® PDF Files

A step-by-step guide that covers more advanced techniques for optimizing Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files so that they can be made accessible to users with disabilities such as blindness or low vision.

A Ten Principles: A Technical Writer's Primer

This booklet contains ten proven principles of technical writing dealing with issues ranging from the challenges of existing documentation, to dealing with technical gurus, to how to ask the right questions at the right times.

Designing Accessible T-Government Services

This research shows some potentiality of Digital TV, and chiefly DTT, for promoting e-inclusion activities and granting accessible entertainment and t-government services.

White Paper Writing Guide

The words 'white paper' in the title of a document no longer indicate a detailed and authoritative report. Many white papers today are overly long product brochures weighed down by weak organization, confusing content, unsupported assertions, and poor document design. If you follow the instructions in this guide, you will write real white papers: authoritative business communications that achieve marketing goals by explaining technical ideas clearly with a compelling presentation of business value.

DocBook Basics and References

DocBook provides a system for writing structured documents using SGML or XML. It is particularly well-suited to books and papers about computer hardware and software, though it is by no means limited to them.

Freedom of Expression®: Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity

The notion of intellectual property now extends well beyond digital music sampling to biology (gene patenting) and "scents and gestures"--and laws governing it, the author says, are being wielded like a bludgeon.

An Introduction to Machine Translation

The mechanization of translation has been one of humanity's oldest dreams. In the twentieth century it has become a reality, in the form of computer programs capable of translating a wide variety of texts from one natural language into another. This book introduces methods adopted in current systems

Facilitating Reflection: A Manual for Leaders and Educators

'Reflection' is a vital component of service-learning. This manual was designed for educators and leaders of service groups who have an interest and a commitment to provide reflection opportunities for students and community partners alike. College professors, K-12 teachers, community organization leaders, and leaders of service organizations have all found, 'Facilitating Reflection: A Manual for Leaders and Educators,' a useful supplement to their work.

DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide

DocBook is a collection of standards and tools for technical publishing. DocBook was originally created by a consortium of software companies as a standard for computer documentation. But the basic 'book' features of DocBook can be used for other kinds of content, so it has been adapted to many purposes.

DocBook: The Definitive Guide

This book is designed to be the clear, concise, normative reference to the DocBook DTD. This book is the official documentation for the DocBook DTD.

More Than Screen Deep: Toward Every-Citizen Interfaces to the Nation's Information Infrastructure

The spread of information systems and, in particular, information infrastructure throughout the economy and social fabric raises questions about the technology's ease of use by different people, from those with limited technical know-how to those with various disabilities to the so-called power users who push for higher performance on many dimensions.

The Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology: A Methodological Investigation

To try and explain everything means to explain nothing.

Thinking and Speaking

This book is a study of one of the most complex problems of psychology, the interrelation of thought and language. As far as we know, it has not yet been investigated experimentally in a systematic fashion. We have attempted at least a first approach to this task by conducting experimental studies of a number of separate aspects of the total problem.

The Guide to Effective Illustration: Images for Presentation and Publication

An important part of modern communication is the use of images, both with oral presentations and in publications, to convey the essence of the author's message. As the methods of preparing, transmitting, and presenting images proliferate, we are all challenged to make the best use possible of each imaging technology.

Free Culture

The modern-day equivalents of the early twentieth-century radio or nineteenth-century railroads are using their power to get the law to protect them against this new, more efficient, more vibrant technology for building culture.

The Immediacy of Rhetoric: Definitions, Illustrations, and Implications

Because of its complexity, 'kairos' is frequently explained in relation to other key terms of time and place.

Into the Blogosphere

This online, edited collection explores discursive, visual, social, and other communicative features of weblogs. Essays analyze and critique situated cases and examples drawn from weblogs and weblog communities. Such a project requires a multidisciplinary approach, and contributions represent perspectives from Rhetoric, Communication, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Linguistics, and Education, among others.

The Slashdot Effect: Analysis of a Large-Scale Public Conversation on the World Wide Web

This dissertation argues that Slashdot emerged from collaboration among a group that shares a cultural commitment to open discussion. This combination¡ªthe dedication to open discussion with the technology to facilitate mass interaction¡ª allows Slashdot to perform the larger function of linking social groups, voices, and ideas that would otherwise remain separated.

Wide Open: Open Source Methods and their Future Potential

The principles of 'open source' - collaborative forms of creating knowledge pioneered in software development - have huge untapped potential to transform business, government and everyday life.

Survey of the State of the Art in Human Language Technology

The field of human language technology covers a broad range of activities with the eventual goal of enabling people to communicate with machines using natural communication skills. Research and development activities include the coding, recognition, interpretation, translation, and generation of language.

Electronic Scientific, Technical, and Medical Journal Publishing and Its Implications: Report of a Symposium

A report on the STC (Scientific, Technical and Medical) publishing enterprise as it exists today.

Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory

A classical discussion of how to speak appropriately to audiences.

Dr. Jones: A Software Design Explorer's Crystal Ball

Most of software design is redesign. Redesign in the normal course of design happens when the software becomes difficult to maintain and the problem it is intended to solve has changed. Although software redesign is necessary, frequent, and pervasive, there is a dearth of tools that help programmers do it. Instead, programmers primarily use pen and paper, away from the computer where tools could help the most. To address this shortcoming, I have developed Dr. Jones, a redesign assistant for Java programs.

Communicating in a Crisis: Risk Communication Guidelines for Public Officials

Sound and thoughtful risk communication can assist public officials in preventing ineffective, fear-driven, and potentially damaging public responses to serious crises such as unusual disease outbreaks and bioterrorism. Moreover, appropriate risk communication procedures foster the trust and confidence that are vital in a crisis situation.

Risk Communication and Government: Theory and Application for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency

Research has shown that public perceptions of risk are constantly changing and evolving as the dynamics of public opinion shift in response to the environment in which we all live.

ecommUSE user experience strategy

The first objective of this research was to build up substantive knowledge about which specific factors make customers trust e-commerce websites. The second objective was to build up and validate methodological knowledge in the form of tools that HCI practitioners can use to design and evaluate trust-shaping factors in e-commerce websites. On the basis of literature on trust and e-commerce surveys, a first model of trust in e-commerce (MoTEC) was developed. Through user tests, the initial model was refined to increase its descriptive power. The final MoTEC model contains four main dimensions, containing components and subcomponents.

De Information Process Maturity Model (IPMM)

There are several reasons for the Information Process Maturity Model: moving beyond chaos; moving beyond the heroism of talented and dedicated individuals; moving toward a repeatable, reliable process. It is the reality of the 21th Century: People from the Western countries don't understand the real imagination of the post-soviet people in The Eastern European countries. The matter is: we have not been living in a private property society & and in a national liberal country till 1991. So, my personal and my colleagues' experince had been summarised there in the publicity book "BUSINESS in Ukraine". The main problem to solve is the countrywide system of a liberal market tersonality training. Everybody has to learn to be a master of its own personality and lot. Oleksandr Nahornyy, author, editor, producer

Taming OpenOffice.org Writer 1.1: Tips and Tricks for Academic, Technical, and Business Writers

This book is for intermediate and advanced users of OpenOffice.org Writer. You may not have used this program before, but you have used another word processor (such as Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect) and you are familiar with the basics of word processing. Typical users include academic writers, technical writers, and other business and professional writers—anyone who produces books, research papers, proposals, or other documents requiring the use of more than the basic features. For example, you need to use styles instead of direct formatting of headings and other paragraphs, and you need to include chapter information in the footers of pages, or you want to use master documents to control a book containing many chapters, perhaps written by different people.

Digital Publishing F5 | Refreshed

Digital Publishing F5 | Refreshed was produced, designed, and published at an academic conference workshop, Computers and Writing 2003 in West Lafayette, Indiana, by a team of (at least) 30 people. Our goal was to show that scholars and teachers--when they work collaboratively, have the right technology, and diverse experience with digital publishing technologies—can move to the forefront in publishing, not just as writers, but as publishers, production designers, editors, and (even) distributors

STC Chapter Handbook

Running a volunteer organization is an opportunity to develop your leadership ability and your sense of professional community. When you complete your duties at the end of this year, you will have gained leadership skills that will benefit you in other areas of your life. This handbook was prepared by STC leaders with many years of experience running local chapters. Their experiences resulted in the wealth of tips, suggestions, and cautions that this document contains. As part of your planning for the year, STC strongly encourages you to take the time to review the entire handbook.

Dive Into Accessibility: 30 Days to a More Accessible Web Site

This book answers two questions. The first question is 'Why should I make my web site more accessible?' If you do not have a web site, this book is not for you. The second question is 'How can I make my web site more accessible?' If you are not convinced by the first answer, you will not be interested in the second.

Apple Help and John Carroll's Minimalism

This report gives a brief overview of minimalism, a description of an Apple Computer documentation project, and a summary of my findings. It also provides some of my and my Apple colleagues' recommendations to improve both the user's experience and that of the instructional designers working to write Apple Help content. Through the course of this report, I will provide support for my hypotheses that (1) the current Apple Help model is not a minimalist help system, but that (2) users of most Apple software would not be well served by such a system anyway.

Producing Quality Technical Information

A book about how to produce well-constructed technical writing and illustration.

Building Accessible Websites: Serialization

Designers assume accessibility means a boring site, a myth borne out by oldschool accessibility advocates, whose hostility to visual appeal is barely suppressed. Neither camp has its head screwed on right. It's not either/or; it's both/and.

Designing for Lifeworlds: Genre and Activity in Information Systems Design and Evaluation

Increasingly, professional communicators design and evaluate information systems. Yet the dominant theoretical frameworks and research methodologies are limited in important ways.

Use-Oriented Documentation in Software

We examine how efficiency and quality in software development can be increased through the design of software documentation and reading support for software documentation. The thesis reports on the DJavadoc project and the reading support for online Java API reference documentation that it provides. The Java API reference documentation can be viewed as a collection of documentation designed for multiple needs. As a consequence, excessive information is present in most situations. In DJavadoc we have extended the official Java API reference documentation to achieve control over the visibility of information types. DJavadoc adds client-side, real-time redesign to the documentation to support the design of multiple views. As a result, the reader may further design views of the information that are more in line with the reader’s personal and changing needs. In the thesis we also discuss online API reference documentation and its role in programming.

Учебник по Проектиране на Човеко-Машинен Интерфейс

През последните 20 години технологиите са напреднали до такава степен, че почти всеки влиза в контакт с компютър по един или друг начин. За разлика от изминалите години, когато само специалисти са използвали компютри, днес знанията и опита на различните потребители са много големи. Затова е важно начина, по който хората и компютрите си взаимодействат да е точен и ясен. Въпреки това, проектирането на точен ЧМИ не винаги е тривиално, както сочат повечето от лошо проектираните Компютърни Системи (КС). Едно от предизвикателсвата на проектирането е то да е в течение на технологичните промени и да осигурява максимална полза за човека. Главната причина, поради която много хора от бизнеса се интересуват от ЧМИ е, че те искат да спечелят, като увеличат ефективността на персонала си. Друга важна причина е сигурността: някои видове КС могат да застрашават живота, ако нямат добър интерфейс.

Information on the Assembly Line: A Review of Information Design As It Relates to Technical Communication

As we begin the twenty-first century, the assembly line model is once again being put into practice in the global industry. This time, however, the materials that companies are working with are more intangible; information and development processes are now being analyzed and broken down to their most basic components, as companies try to streamline production processes and reuse content as much as they can.

The Guide to Translation and Localization

This is the fourth edition of a book summarizing translation and localization processes. We describe how you can successfully approach any type of translation and localization project. Learn how to address translation needs prior to and during the development of your project materials; the results will be reduced project timelines, lower localization costs, and improved quality and consistency for your localized products. This guide provides insight into documentation, software, and Web site content localization, including technical considerations spanning from document layout to e-commerce Web site and double-byte software challenges.

Conversations: Computer-Mediated Dialogue, Multi-logue, and Learning

The purpose of this [text] is to argue in favor of a 'pedagogy of textual conversation,' a pedagogy made possible in large part by electronic technology, by computer mediated communication. Informing the argument is a deep philosophical commitment to conversation itself as the primary mode of meaning-making in both social and personal life. Material presented in support of the main argument is drawn from current and past pedagogical and communications theory as well as from ethnographic research conducted in the fall semester of 1994 in which students in an English composition class were linked to students in an education class via a single VAX electronic conference. Actual experiences in the electronic medium are forwarded to suggest that those who engage in extensive textual conversation with one another benefit from improved rhetorical skills, understanding of course content, the ability to make connections between ideas, and a liberalization of ideological views. But this [book] is not meant only to argue this issue in a classical or academically authorized sense, i.e., as a monological exercise of logic and reason with its inevitable linear development and closure. It is meant also to enact a conversational model. Thus it is a hybrid form of writing, a fugue-like composition which, like its musical counterpart is a polyphonic (multi-vocal) composition based upon several related, but different themes enunciated by several voices or parts in turn, subjected to contrapuntal treatment, and which gradually builds up into a complex form having distinct divisions or stages marked at the end by an open-ended climax rather than a conclusion. In other words, the work as a whole is in great part the subject of itself.

Results of Usability Testing Research on Plain Language Draft Sections of the Employment Insurance Act

The Department of Justice Canada and Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) are working jointly on a new 'plain language' version of the EI Act – a version with the potential to be more reader-friendly and usable. This is a profoundly important, precedent-setting initiative with implications for legislative drafters and users of legislation across the country. The usability testing was commissioned to help provide strategic insight into plain language legislative drafting so that drafting efforts can be as effective as possible and speak to the realities and unique needs of key legislative user groups. Simply put, the purpose of the testing is to provide a solid foundation for wise decision-making to guide plain language drafting. To this end, the testing gauged how efficiently users of different versions of the EI Act found needed information, understood it, and applied it to an intended purpose.

The Rhetorical Dimensions of Cyberspace

The sophisticated command of language, it has been said, is what distinguishes the human being from all other species of animals. The power to create and employ linguistic signifiers in order to communicate with relative certainty (deconstructionist theory notwithstanding) that which is signified, and the power to co-create meaning within social contexts by using these linguistic tools are hallmarks of our humanity, for better or for worse, which have been throughout the ages subjects of intense interest, study, scholarship, and debate. It is through the use of these linguistic tools that we share experience and investigate the nature of our being, pose the questions who are we, what are we, and even why are we, speculate about the answers, then test and challenge claims to truth derived from our speculating/answering process. In many ways, we are bound on all sides of our conscious being by language and thus share basic needs to see and to understand the complex nature of that which binds us. The study of that complexity is called rhetoric, and those of us who call ourselves rhetoricians, no matter our personal theoretical preferences, hold to our belief that language is empowering, that the observation and analysis of oral and written communication can make us better communicators ourselves and can serve as pedagogical tools for empowering others.

Writing Selves/Writing Societies: Research from Activity Perspectives

This is the first in a series of online books sponsored by the WAC Clearinghouse. The chapters in this edited collection consider human activity and writing from three different perspectives: the role of writing in producing work and the economy; the role of writing in creating, maintaining, and transforming socially located selves and communities; and the role of writing formal education. The editors observe, 'The activity approaches to understanding writing presented in this volume give us ways to examine more closely how people do the work of the world and form the relations that give rise to the sense of selves and societies through writing, reading, and circulating texts. These essays provide major contributions to both writing research and activity theory as well as to the recently emerged but now robust research tradition that brings the two together.'

State of the Art Review on Hypermedia Issues And Applications

Hypertext systems are emerging as a new class of complex information management systems. These systems allow people to create, annotate, link together, and share information from a variety of media such as text, graphics, audio, video, animation, and programs. Hypertext systems provide a non-sequential and entirely new method of accessing information unlike traditional information systems which are primarily sequential in nature. They provide flexible access to information by incorporating the notions of navigation, annotation, and tailored presentation [Bieber, 1993]. There are a number of research issues related to the design, development, and application of hypertext systems. This paper is a review of literature related to all these issues. This chapter is an introduction to hypertext, some existing systems, and some pioneers who have contributed to the definition and understanding of many aspects related to hypertext. Chapter 2 discusses issues related to hypertext implementation. Chapter 3 is on database requirements for hypertext systems. Chapter 4 discusses user interface issues and evaluation of hypertext. Chapter 5 is on information retrieval in hypertext systems. Chapter 6 discusses research efforts in the area of integrating hypertext with the work environment. Chapter 7 discusses some of the applications for which the hypertext paradigm is most suitable. Chapter 8 discusses a systematic approach to user interface design for a hyprtext system. It is an attempt to apply some of the ideas discussed in earlier chapters. Chapter 9 is a summary of all research issues and sets some directions for further work.

Power Tools for Technical Communication Instructors Manual

A PDF version of the instructors manual for Power Tools.

Basic Communication Theory

In the 1940's researchers at Bell Telephone Laboratories devised a model of the process of human communication. This model consists of numeous elements.

The Mayfield Handbook of Technical and Scientific Writing

Effective technical documents do not just happen; they are the result of a deliberate and comprehensive design and production process. Although writers may vary some of the steps they use to create a document, effective technical and scientific writing typically follows the same general procedures.

Universal Usability Guide

The goal of universal access to information and communications services is compelling. Enthusiastic networking innovators, business leaders, and government policy makers see opportunities and benefits from widespread usage. But even if they succeed and the economies of scale bring low costs, computing researchers will still have much work to do. They will have to deal with the difficult question: How can information and communications services be made usable for every citizen? Designing for experienced frequent users is difficult enough, but designing for a broad audience of unskilled users is a far greater challenge. Scaling up from a listserv for 100 software engineers to 100,000 schoolteachers to 100,000,000 registered voters will take inspiration and perspiration.

The Psychology of Menu Selection: Designing Cognitive Control at the Human/Computer Interface

Menu selection is emerging as an important mode of human/computer interaction. This book, the first entirely devoted to this important form of human/computer interaction, provides detailed theoretical and empirical information of interest to software designers and human/computer interaction specialists and researchers. A new theoretical approach to menu selection is taken by developing a psychological theory of cognitive control by the user. A comprehensive review of empirical research on menu selection is presented in an organized fashion to aid in the design and evaluation of systems. Finally, information is given on how to protype and evaluate menu selection systems using both performance data and user ratings.

Screen Captures 102

This document is about making screen captures for technical writers working primarily in a Microsoft Windows environment. The tools targeted include Adobe FrameMaker, Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, along with Techsmith’s SnagIt, Adobe Photoshop, and Ulead’s PhotoImpact 4.2. Certainly, the thoughts and techniques mentioned herein can be applied to other professions, other operating systems, and other tools.

Escritura Cientifico Tecnica

El objetivo de una comunicación técnica no divulgativa es transmitir ideas, información o descubrimientos de carácter técnico o científico dentro de un entorno homogéneo (interacción entre miembros de una misma comunidad, por ejemplo, la comunidad académica de profesores y alumnos). Incluye elementos tales como: Preguntas o dudas sobre una materia concreta a una autoridad competente. Por ejemplo: un mensaje de correo electrónico enviado a un profesor para consultar una duda sobre la organización del laboratorio o sobre una práctica; Informes sobre el análisis, diseño, implementación o pruebas de un determinado sistema o de un módulo de un sistema. Dentro de este apartado podemos incluir la memoria final de la práctica de laboratorios como el LSED o el LCEL; Informes sobre mediciones de laboratorio incluyendo su discusión. Forman parte de la memoria de LSED o LCEL.

Guidelines for Alphabetical Arrangement of Letters and Sorting of Numerals and Other Symbols

This technical report provides rules for the alphabetical arrangement of headings in lists of all kinds, such as bibliographies, indexes, dictionaries, directories, inventories, etc. It also covers the sorting of Arabic or Roman numbers, and other symbols. It consists of seven rules that cover problems which may arise in alphanumeric arrangement of headings. The technical report is based on the traditional order of letters in the English alphabet and that of numerals in ascending arithmetical order. It does not address issues concerning meaning or type of headings. The rules can generally be applied by human beings as well as by computers. Each rule is followed by illustrative examples.

Guidelines for Indexes and Related Information Retrieval Devices

This NISO Technical Report provides expert guidance on designing indexes for every kind of document. Coverage includes automatic indexing and indexing based on intellectual analysis and the use of controlled vocabularies. A comprehensive glossary of indexing terms is provided and recommended introductory text for print and back-of-the-book indexes, database indexes, computer produced indexes, and electronic search indexes are given.

Scientific and Technical Reports: Elements, Organization, and Design

This revision brings the standard on report writing into the electronic age by including de facto document type definitions (DTDs) to describe the structure of reports so the document can be electronically processed using document imaging, OCR, compression/decompression, and optical media storage of full text. Z39.18 also provides explicit guidance on the preparation of reports in the traditional print environment. Included are directions on the bibliographic data elements that should appear on the cover and title page of a report, a description of the scope of each section of a report and instruction on the most effective communication of textual and visual information and tabular materials. Recommendations on publication formats, the use of figures and tables, the presentation of numbers and units, formulas and equations, and symbols, abbreviations and acronyms are also given. Z39.18 supersedes MIL-STD-847B and is approved for use by the Department of Defense (DoD).

The Author's Voice and the Reader's Role: An Analysis of Rhetorical Issues in How-to Texts

In mainstream computer applications such as Microsoft Word for Windows version 6.0, one will find a User's Guide included with the product. This User's Guide is a primary manual. It is included with the software application. A visit to any large bookstore will also reveal a large number of manuals about Word. Called secondary manuals, these manuals are not written by the same software development company that produced Word, nor are they included with Word. Both types of manuals are produced by technical writers and in many ways are similar in scope, content and cognitive strategies. However, in other respects some primary and secondary manuals are quite different, and that difference is the focus of this thesis.

Web Design: An Empiricist's Guide

Before our web sites can achieve their full potential, we need effective site design techniques. But while empirical research and tradition offer reliable guidelines for preparing print works, even the most fundamental web design questions remain open.

The Art of Electronic Publishing

This book is a complete birdseye view of the World Wide Web, Internet, and the technologies involved in creating electronic publications from them. This book provides you with background information and practical guidance on how to surf, view, and publish material for the Web, as well as on paper. The explosion of activity surrounding the Internet and the World Wide Web requires a sane, non-hyped guide to help you navigate the sometimes treacherous waters.

The Intranet as Ecosystem: A Model for Sustaining Development

The complexity of the intranet and the interrelationship between it and the organization’s overall environment mean that traditional methods for supporting company information technology and communication (in which geographically and administratively separate groups determined company standards and guidelines) may not be adequate for the new medium. Available resources are also inadequate; material for web 'authors' (writers, information architects, graphic artists, and programmers) usually focuses at the site level, and most academic and trade articles on intranets focus on the central internal home page or on aspects of the physical infrastructure. Resources covering the whole intranet generally focus on management issues—hiring staff, setting goals, overseeing the design process, selling ideas to upper management, and getting people to use the system once it is deployed. But support groups tasked with the everyday design and maintenance of the intranet also need to “manage” it—that is, to envision the intranet’s role in the overall communication and technological structure of the organization, design and maintain its architectural structure, and sustain it by ensuring its content is accurate, timely, useful, and usable.

The Perception of Scientific Uncertainty in Science News Writing

When science is represented in the news, articles can misrepresent uncertainty in one of two ways: either they make the science appear more uncertain than it is by focusing on controversy, or they make it appear more certain by focusing on the end result or the discovery. Paradoxically, the high degree of uncertainty that pervades the science covered in most news stories and that, in some cases, makes the science newsworthy, receives little attention. This is because journalists must reconcile the difference between uncertain science and an expectation that news is certain. Somewhere in the reconciliation, uncertainty often gets left out.

Single Sourcing, Content Management and the Otobase Project

This report examines some of the issues raised by multiuse publishing in the context of the Otobase software documentation project at the University of Washington. In doing so, it aims to contribute to our understanding of how single sourcing and content management might help us better adapt to users, and also to view the impact of a structured approach to documentation on writers and editors. The report will also use these ideas to suggest both current and long-term improvements for the Otobase project. First, it will briefly describe the project and its current documentation, and then look at theories of single sourcing, content management and structured documents before applying these theories to the project itself.

Storytelling as Collaboration and Community: Designing an Interactive Multi-Author Environment for Hypertext Fiction

While web technology has become pervasive, it might be argued that it has made few fundamental changes in the way we live. The graphical browser and the emergence of corporate entities brought the Web to the forefront of the Internet and brought the Web to the masses. But popularity, along with proprietary and corporate influence changed the goals and focus of online life. In many ways this change in goals resulted in the Internet failing to fulfill much of its initial promise.

Streaming Academic Presentations: A Web Site Redesigned

This project involved a comprehensive redesign of the Streaming Audio and Video site on EServer.org. The tasks included predesign planning (audience analysis, flowcharting, scoping the project), designing (creating layout, graphics, and information architecture), and implementing the necessary database and HTML code to execute the methods prescribed in the design.

User-Friendly Usability Reports: The Effect of Praise on Product-Improvement Efforts By Teams

A largely uncharted issue in usability is the effect that a particular style of usability report has on the motivation of the team whose work the report addresses. Recent work in cognitive science and social psychology offers evidence of an intimate interconnection among thought, emotion and motivation, with implications for usability reports as well as other forms of technical communication. In this preliminary study, fifteen triads of adult workers arranged materials on a prototype Web site for forty-five minutes. They were then subjected to negative, positive-and-negative, or neutral feedback conditions. Measures for motivation were post-treatment time on task, as well as individual self-reports on attitudes.

Improving Risk Communication

Technological risk and the process of explaining risks to the public have become major public issues. The mention of Bhopal or Love Canal can provoke emotional arguments--not only about the hazards themselves but also about how they were explained to the public. As new laws, the threat of AIDS, and other factors make risk communication more crucial, officials in government and industry are seeking guidelines on how to communicate effectively and responsibly. This volume offers an approach to better quality in risk communication. The combined insight of experts from government, business, and universities, Improving Risk Communication draws on the most current academic and practical information and analysis. Issues addressed include why risk communication has become more difficult in recent decades, what the major problems are, and how common misconceptions often hamper communication campaigns. Aimed especially at top decisionmakers in government and industry, the book emphasizes that solving the problems of risk communication is as much about improving procedures as improving the content of risk messages. Specific recommendations for change include a Risk Message Checklist and a call for developing a consumer's guide to risk. Appendixes provide additional details.

Issues in Risk Assessment

The scientific basis, inference assumptions, regulatory uses, and research needs in risk assessment are considered in this two-part volume. The first part, Use of Maximum Tolerated Dose in Animal Bioassays for Carcinogenicity, focuses on whether the maximum tolerated dose should continue to be used in carcinogenesis bioassays. The committee considers several options for modifying current bioassay procedures. The second part, Two-Stage Models of Carcinogenesis, stems from efforts to identify improved means of cancer risk assessment that have resulted in the development of a mathematical dose-response model based on a paradigm for the biologic phenomena thought to be associated with carcinogenesis.

Promoting Health: Intervention Strategies from Social and Behavioral Research

By itself, biomedical research cannot address the most significant challenges to improving public health. Approximately half of all causes of mortality in the United States are linked to social and behavioral factors such as smoking, diet, alcohol use, sedentary lifestyle, and accidents. Yet less than five percent of the money spent annually on U.S. health care is devoted to reducing the risks of these preventable conditions. Behavioral and social interventions offer great promise, but as yet their potential has been relatively poorly tapped. Promoting Health identifies those promising areas of social science and behavioral research that may address public health needs.

Understanding Risk: Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society

Understanding Risk addresses a central dilemma of risk decisionmaking in a democracy: detailed scientific and technical information is essential for making decisions, but the people who make and live with those decisions are not scientists. The key task of risk characterization is to provide needed and appropriate information to decisionmakers and the public. This important new volume illustrates that making risks understandable to the public involves much more than translating scientific knowledge. The volume also draws conclusions about what society should expect from risk characterization and offers clear guidelines and principles for informing the wide variety of risk decisions that face our increasingly technological society.

Language Connections: Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum

Language Connections, originally published by NCTE in 1982, focuses on general language skills teachers in all disciplines can use 'to enhance student learning and, at the same time, reinforce the more specific language skills taught by reading, writing and speech teachers' (ix). The 12 chapters address issues including journal writing, problem solving approaches to writing, transactional writing, writing to learn, reading processes, and conferencing. An annotated bibliography is provided.

Strengthening Programs for Writing Across the Curriculum

This collection of thoughtful, thoroughly grounded essays explores the design of writing-across-the-curriculum programs in new and maturing programs. The collection also contains an appendix listing the results of the first comprehensive survey of writing-across-the-curriculum programs in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada.

Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum, Third Edition

Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum, presented here in its third edition, provides a comprehensive, accessible discussion of teaching writing across the curriculum. Written by one of the leaders in the field of writing across the curriculum (WAC), it offers a brief introduction to WAC and then discusses how writing can be used to help students learn and communicate. Art Young writes that this book can 'serve as a guide to teachers who have been assigned or who have volunteered to teach a required 'writing-intensive' course in their discipline as well as to faculty who themselves decide to include student writing. whether occasionally or frequently, in their courses.' In addition to serving as a guide for teachers of WAC courses, this book also serves as an invaluable resource for faculty in English departments and writing programs.

Writing Across the Curriculum: A Guide to Developing Programs

Addressing the design, funding, operation, and underlying pedagogical principles of WAC programs, this comprehensive collection of essays offers important advice to WAC program designers and teachers. In 12 chapters, the contributors to this important collection discuss issues including program design, writing in the disciplines, writing to learn, writing-intensive courses, and the relationships among WAC programs, first-year writing programs, general education, and writing centers.

Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science

In Shaping Written Knowledge, Charles Bazerman traces the history and character of the experimental article in science, calling attention to the social and rhetorical forces that shaped its development. Truly a landmark in writing studies, this book provides a broadly interdisciplinary exploration of an important genre and offers insights that extend far beyond its immediate focus of study.

Aristotle's Rhetoric

Welcome to the online version of Aristotle's Rhetoric. These hypertext pages are based on the 1954 translation of noted classical scholar W. Rhys Roberts. In editing this text, every effort was made to preserve the original style of Roberts' print edition, though footnotes and parenthetical Greek phrasings were omitted due to the typographical restrictions of hypertext markup language. In addition, British punctuation rules were generally altered to conform to American style, though British spelling conventions were retained.

Task-Centered User Interface Design

The central goal of this book is to teach the reader how to design user interfaces that will enable people to learn computer systems quickly and use them effectively, efficiently, and comfortably. The interface issues addressed are primarily cognitive, that is, having to do with mental activities such as perception, memory, learning, and problem solving. Physical ergonomic issues such as keyboard height or display contrast are covered only briefly.

International User Interfaces

Browse the complete table of contents for this book and read about international usability testing.

A Project Plan for Creating Training Courses

This link formerly referenced a free Microsoft Project 98 project plan for designing and developing technical courseware. This has been expanded into a 78-page ebook on how to write a successful software training course.

Online Technical Writing: an Online Textbook

This text is used by students in online technical-communication courses worldwide as well as the online courses below taught by David A. McMurrey, Tim Altanero, and Devorah Feldman at Austin Community College (ACC) in Austin, Texas USA.

Cultural Issues in Business Communication

Practical tips and ideas for those who develop material, services or products for translation and/or export.

A Glossary of Rhetorical Terms with Examples

A comprehensive glossary of figures of speech.

An Overview of Online Learning

This 1998 book introduces online learning, and provides an overview of the key issues to consider when working with online learning. Specifically, it: describes what online learning is and identifies its major uses; identifies the four major types; provides an overview of the technology needed; and lists the project issues--that is, management and learning issues--that need to be addressed when developing materials for online learning.

Yale Web Style Guide

This style manual developed as an outgrowth of Web development projects. It reflects the authors' attempts to apply some of the lessons they have learned in multimedia software design, graphic interface design, and book design to the new medium of Web pages and site design.