Design>Content Management

Reusability 2.0: The Key to Publishing Learning

What would you do if you had to develop and deliver personalized training to 900,000 employees, located in 34,000 different locations globally with a complex set of variables that changes training on a location-by-location basis? The key is reusability 2.0. While technology-delivered training has become mainstream in many organizations, most are still not fully leveraging the power of reusable learning content to meet their instructional needs.

Companies Struggling with Unstructured Content

Firms wrestling with unstructured data such as emails and spreadsheets don't see enterprise content management as the answer to their problems.

Requirements of Content Management Systems: Definition According to Need

In all companies, the requirements of an editorial system are worked out individually from the analysis of existing functioning and the definition of editorial and publication processes required in the future. The first important criteria for analysis are change frequencies and degree of reuse of the published information. The description of the information types as well as translation sequences constitute another starting point for the definition of a modular work process (single-source principle) and publication options (cross-media publishing).

Let's Learn How Not To Mess Up With Your Web Site Content

Every web site is conceived and designed keeping in view a particular purpose to serve. The aim of web site may vary: some web site intends to showcase products or services of the company it belongs to, some provides information to its target audience, or some just exposes its company on the web in a brand building exercise. This is to note that whatever be the nature of web site, web copy plays it own crucial role in furthering the interest of the site. It is imperative that web content is easy-to-read, easy-to-find, and easy-to-understand.

To Structure or Not to Structure

Behind all the questions about how to model something is a bigger question: do you model it at all? When is it obvious to structure some content, and when do you just throw it into the 'WYSIWYG pile'?

ATAG (Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines) Assessment of WordPress

This document assesses WordPress 2.01 against the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.

An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Automated Templates

Automated templates are an alternative to traditional supporting information for helping users perform complex tasks. In this study users performed tasks with and without wizard to trial and error, printed manuals, and online the use of automated templates. Results suggest that if fakes help, and examined the use of supporting information some time for users to learn to use automated templates, but in performing complex tasks. We also considered once they do, the templates help users perform tasks more whether automated templates serve an educational successfully and more quickly.

Enterprise Architecture Essentials, Part 6: Manageability

Organizations today face the challenge of two important enterprise architecture requirements: the need for agility and the overhead of regulatory governance. These requirements can be seen as mutually antagonistic -- if business processes must be flexible, then governance of those processes may be difficult. This article, part six in a six-part series, explores the notion of using manageability as a key enterprise architecture (EA) quality attribute to solve this problem. EA development is an ongoing process, and the central idea of this article is that by applying manageability as an EA attribute, the organizational processes, systems, and software become manageable.

Ensuring A Successful CMS Implementation

The single most important factor in a successful CMS implementation lies with you and your people. Your staff members are the principal users of the system, and the SMEs in your organization are the secondary users. It is their adoption of the new processes and governance structures that makes or breaks a CMS implementation. According to some, process and cultural change accounts for 90%, while technology contributes only 10% to the success of a CMS.

Web Two-Point Uh-Oh

The problem with many Web 2.0 applications is the assumption that the community's motives are good, or at least neutral. Perlin's column explores how one of the drawbacks of Web 2.0--potential loss of control over information--has manifested itself.

The Meaning of Knowledge Management

We hear the term knowledge management bandied about. It sounds suspiciously like a trendy new phrase for what we used to call 'documentation.' In truth, knowledge management is more than documentation. It encompasses documentation, data management, library management, and information design. Knowledge management is increasingly important; as the amount of content has increased, the task of locating the information in the content has become more difficult. You see, information is different from content. And knowledge is something that derives from information.

Moving to an XML-Based Web Site

In early 2007, I started the task of reworking the ageing HyperWrite Web site. The site was originally created in 1995. It underwent a major rework (to a frames-based design) in 1997, and was reworked in 1999, 2000 and 2002. In the decade since the Web site was launched, not only has Web technology moved on, but HyperWrite's activities, focus and business direction are now quite different. Time and budget were set aside to renovate the site to better serve HyperWrite's business needs, and to serve as a practical example of the company's capabilities.

Information Modeling: A Practical Approach

Information models are a critical component of single sourcing, enterprise content management, and dynamic content management. The information model is your blueprint for the effective writing, structuring, and delivery of reusable content. This session explains how to design information models, including information product models and element models. It also explains the role of metadata and how to effectively design it.

Blog 101: An Overview of Weblog Technologies

A weblog or 'blog' is a Web site with content consisting of a series of discrete postings added sequentially and presented in reverse chronological order. Historically used for personal Web sites, blogs in fact represent a form of lightweight content management that can be adapted to virtually any topic, including technical communication. The recent explosion of blogs is in part a result of the availability of publishing tools that simplify their creation. These tools vary significantly in capability, setup, and ease of use, and each offers advantages and disadvantages.

What is Wiki?

Wiki is a category of web server software that allows users to contribute content. Collaboration is the key to Wiki, which is designed as a powerful system for online communities to build web pages and web sites. Unlike blogs and forums, all users are allowed to contribute and edit existing content. Wiki is derived from the Hawaiian term "wiki wiki" meaning "quick". The concept behind a Wiki is that collaboration on projects will move it along quicker.

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.

MarthaStewart.com: Making the Case for Customer-Centric Content Management

When you hear the term "customer centric content management", you might think we're talking about marketing content. We're not. We're talking about managing the delivery of all types of content, including marketing content. And, we're specifically talking about providing individuals -- people -- both existing and prospective customers, with only the content that is relevant and of interest to them. You may think you already do a good job at this task, but in most organizations, there is significant room for improvement. Most of the problems are caused by one very big mistake: failing to listen.

Better Content Management through Information Architecture

Content Management Systems promise so much: content is easier to publish, easier to update, and easier to find and use. Lots of promises, but do CMSs really deliver? Masood Nasser examines why Content Management Systems often fail and shows how Information Architecture can come to the rescue.

Structured Content Management in the Enterprise

As other areas within organizations begin to consider structured content for the same reasons as technical communication departments, technical communicators have a golden opportunity to assist others in their move toward structured CM.

Which Hosted Wiki Is Right for You?

A look at three hosted wiki services that are free or relatively cheap to use and provide easy tools to set up your wiki within minutes.

Structuring Your Documents for Maximum Reuse

A major topic among information development managers these days is single sourcing--writing information once and using it many times. Structured documents are critical for single sourcing. So, let's explore: what we mean by structuring documents; why structuring is useful; some of the concerns that writers have about structuring documents.

Enterprise Portals: Tip of Which Iceberg?

Summarizing recent CMS Watch research on portal software, Janus Boye finds that portal technology represents just the tip of the enterprise information iceberg. But given the diversity of portal scenarios, you should ask yourself which iceberg you're on.

Dealing with Images in Content Management Systems, Part 1

Most web-based content management systems offer a variety of tools to help contributors enter text. When it comes to graphics, content contributors are usually expected to provide web-ready images to the system. This means that either editorial users needs to know about image optimisation and web image formats, or additional staff are required to make web-ready images out of raw materials. This article demonstrates a technical solution to this problem.

Information Architecture of Content Management

Ajax and Your CMS

If a modern day Rip van Winkle woke up after just a year's sleep, he would be stunned by the buzz around Ajax today. Technology is moving very quickly in this space and whether you are a web author, a CMS developer, or a regular web user, Ajax will make some exciting changes to your world.

Storage and Enterprise Content Management

Almost one-third of the users reported that more than 40 percent of the storage spending is for unstructured documents and information--I think that percentage will continue to grow annually. Further, AIIM President John Mancini, who prepared the report, found that larger organizations especially are aggressively pursuing consolidation and rationalization of their storage and archiving strategies--but that cost is not the prime motivation behind those activities.

XML Repositories: An Idea Whose Time has Finally Come

This white paper discusses the role of an XML repository into today’s enterprise infrastructure. Virtually every database and repository provide some degree of XML support; however, there are important distinctions between support for XML as a data type and the role of a repository whose architecture and operations are optimized to support the broad family of XML recommendations and standards. Specifically, this white paper will explore: The nature and extent of XML use across the enterprise, cost and quality of service implications of an infrastructure with, and without, an XML repository, the evolution of XML repositories from both a technology and a market segment perspective, criteria to determine when an XML repository would add significant value to an existing infrastructure, and capability and packaging recommendations for XML repository functionality that can be used to evaluate specific offerings.

Dynamic Websites: What Are They and Do You Need One?

If you're thinking about getting, or updating, a website, chances are that you'll run into a web designer who will try to sell you on the idea of a 'dynamic site.' Here's what you need to know in order to decide if such an approach is for you.

A Quiet Revolution in Website Maintenance

We're on the verge of a similar revolution in the area of website maintenance.

Content Management Systems

Content management systems are key to running an efficient website. Keep the development group out of the loop on updating content, and you will move ever so much faster. 'Content' doesn’t need the same kind of source control that scripts and templates need. Specific design suggestions follow.

The O'Reilly Radar Blog

The O'Reilly Radar blog will track what we're tracking, and turn the blips into conversations.

Rich Web Text Editing with Kupu

Kupu is an open source application, written in JavaScript, that implements a flexible, full-featured HTML editor that runs in a web page without any special plugins. Its primary use is as an embedded editor in content management systems (CMS), like Zope or Plone, where it allows users to create their own web pages. Its design is flexible enough so that you can embed it into pretty much any web application without too much difficulty.

Characteristics of Web Site Content

Web site content must be recrudescent, repositorial, refluent, and rectilinear. What? Here's an innovative treatment of the essential attributes of online text. Find out why great web site content generally has these 14 characteristics that start with a "R".

Graphic Designer Needs a Web CMS

While you can create very powerful content management solutions with most open-source packages -- they have a much steeper learning curve than you experienced with HTML or Flash.

My CMS Ate My Search Engine Rankings

A dynamically-delivered site in and of itself need not denigrate your search engine rankings. Google and other spiders can follow dynamically-generated pages, up to a point. The key is to have links elsewhere on the site pointing specifically to those pages. If each page results from a purely dynamic query (e.g. using session variables), then you could be in trouble.

Seeking a More Dynamic Website

Putting content in a database will not inherently make your website more dynamic. Making sure that content providers keep information fresh, interesting, and relevant will make your website more dynamic -- and ultimately more useful.

STC and the W3C

As technologies like XML, content management software (CMS), and single sourcing continue to seep into technical communication, they bring demands for cost-effective development, faster time-to-market, and automation. Meeting these demands will require standards for coding, language, metadata, and other such elements. The good old days of 'winging it' in documentation are coming to an end.

Content Management Systems: Don't Automate the Misery

Few organizations have seen much good come of content-management BPR initiatives so far. Of the many reasons for these failures, one stands out: these BPR initiatives—and the systems they spawn—are focused on realizing organizational objectives without sufficient regard for the context, habits, and goals of the people who will actually use the system.

Designing for Web Services

Many technology companies, consultants, and academics are hyping the future of Web services. But how will this background transfer of data between applications affect the user experience?

Website Automation: or, How I Saved My Sanity at the Last Minute

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's maintaining a website. The design is the fun part— solving problems, incorporating a brand, meeting user needs. That's what we live for. But maintenance? Yuck. So I surveyed the technologies available; what could I automate to ease the burden on myself and other volunteers? This article presents the results of this undertaking. It focuses mainly on the processes and their results. I discuss details of the tools and technologies where relevant, but this is not a tutorial on any tools or technologies; I'll provide resources for further information.

Information Architecture of Content Management

When people think about content management, they generally think about it from a systems perspective, focusing primarily on tools and technology. While it is true that content management usually requires a technological solution, it also requires that content be designed for reuse, retrieval, and delivery to meet your authors' and customers' needs. Content management requires that tools be configured to support authoring, reviewing, and publishing tasks, but first, those tasks must be designed. Designing content and the processes to create, review, and publish it is what information architecture is all about. The Information Architecture section of The Rockley Report will focus on the different aspects of information architecture for content management. This article introduces you to some of the components of information architecture that we will cover in The Rockley Report over time.

Extracting Content

How to extract content from a portion of a PDF document.

Calculating the Cost of a Large-Scale Web Site

A well-designed information architecture with intuitive organization, labeling, navigation, and indexing systems can significantly reduce the amount of time that users spend blundering through the hierarchies of Web sites and intranets. How much is this time-savings worth? The case is clearest for intranets where the users are your employees.

Content Management Systems

In this White Paper, we examine the benefits of automated content management, and demonstrate where efficiencies can be gained within your organization. Web sites with more than a few information pages may benefit from content management systems (CMS). Content management systems are automated tools that allow for web site content to be created and administered on a recurring basis. The result puts the responsibility for content development into the hands of the authors (where it belongs) and out of the hands of the programmers.

CMS Wiki

CMS Wiki is a knowledge base for Content Management.

Content Management and Information Architecture

Content management is information architecture writ large.

Information Architects and Their Central Role in Content Management

The process of content management begins when an organization comes to the realization that it needs a system to manage content. While the interpretation of the term content management (CM) can be as simple as a set of guidelines for organizing and maintaining content, more typically today it means a sophisticated software-based system. A full-featured content management system (CMS) takes content from inception to publication and does so in a way that provides for maximum content accessibility and reuse and easy, timely, accurate maintenance of the content base.

Sources of CMS Uncertainty

Not all aspects of a content management system (CMS) project are equally easy. While some elements can be installed 'out of the box', others have proved difficult to implement. The starting point for improving the management of CMS projects is to recognise the sources of uncertainty, and how these affect project outcomes.

Managing the Complexity of Content Management

Content management systems suck. Or so you would think from the strife heard from analysts and practitioners alike. And yet, many websites regularly publish vast amounts of information with superior control and ease compared to manually editing pages.

Greymatter, RSS, and Syndication

Greymatter is an excellent web content management system. After you install it, you can begin to syndicate your content using XML. This article gives you an explicit step-by-step overview of how I created RSS 1.0 and RSS 0.92 files using Greymatter. It is assumed that you have some knowledge of HTML and XML, and that you have already installed Greymatter. Many examples and references are provided to help you along the way.

The WebWord Content Management System

The WebWord content management system is not technical, it is human. In fact, the technology is minimal and the web site works because a human understands and maintains the content using very simple tools. While this approach consumes a lot of time, it is simple and cost effective. Small and medium web sites can get along without using content management systems.

Designing an Information Set for Single-Sourcing

The single source in a robust single source system is not any one of the outputs that may be created from that source. The single source is an information set from which many outputs may be created. Designing an information set is different from designing a document. Greater structure is required, and that structure must be available to the process that creates information products as output, not simply to the reader. A good information set design involves creating a data model, mapping information relationships, and defining patterns of change.

Database-Driven Navigation Bars Using Text and Images

Okay, we've all fiddled with NavBars. In fact, MM's built-in Navigation Bar Builder is pretty sweet for creating NavBars with onMouseOver and onMouseOut behaviors giving your site that professional look. But what if your site changes frequently? One option is to bag the images and stick with a database-driven NavBar that uses a repeat region. We'll look at that approach first. Then we will see how we can replace UltraDev's hardcoded NavBar image behaviors with database-driven links and images.

Defining 'Value-Adding Work' of In-House Information Development Groups

Many in-house information development groups are redefining their role (or seeking to justify their existence) around the concept of 'value-adding work.' But which tasks are value-adding? Finding an answer to this question is critical for the survival of information development groups. Unfortunately, there is no easy, 'one size fits all' answer, because the response depends largely on your point of view. Thus, deciding what is and isn't value-adding may require technical communicators to do more project-by-project task, audience, and media analysis than ever before.

Evolving Client Content

Content management systems are only as good as the content they manage. Garrity explores the care and feeding of low-budget clients who need high-quality content.

Single Sourcing: It's About People, Not Just Technology

Cautions that failing to focus on the people in the organization may diminish the success of a single-sourcing initiative. Covers changes that need to occur in the organization to support a single-sourcing initiative and ways to address issues of change.

Creating a Corporate Electronic Information Delivery Solution

Tandem Computers Incorporated developed a new electronic information delivery system and changed internal publishing processes to achieve greater eficiency and customer satisfaction. We were able to move over 1,000 manuals and 11,000 pieces of support documentation along with education material from two different CD-ROM delivery products to one corporate viewer that supports publishing on both CD-ROM and the World Wide Web. The project included creating a new viewer using industry-standard components, creating new publishing tools, and establishing new corporate relationships and processes.

Do-It-Yourself Single-Sourcing

In recent years, countless articles and conference workshops have touted single sourcing as the Holy Grail of technical writing. Countless articles and conference workshops have also told us that XML is our means to achieving the Grail. However, in the absence of any off-the-shelf products that facilitate XML and single sourcing in our current work environments, I suspect that most people, particularly in smaller companies, believe that implementing XML is too technically daunting, too expensive, or both.

Meet Me in RIO: Implementing Reusable Information Objects

Reusable information objects and reusable learning objects are the building blocks of e-learning courseware and e-documentation. A strong business case can be made for implementing a single-source content repository for RIOs/RLOs to achieve reusability between enterprise applications. Keys to achieving reusability include: an effective metatagging scheme, appropriate levels of granularity, and adherence to standards such as the SCORM.

Dynamic Content Management

Until recently, technical communicators created static content--content that is created in a specific way for a specific purpose (e.g., user guides and help) and that remains the same until the technical communicator deliberately changes it. As single sourcing has made it possible to write information once and use it many times, technical communicators have begun to create static customized content, which is designed to meet the specific needs of the user, the materials to be developed (such as user guides, reference guides, and training), and the delivery media (paper or online). The content is customized for a particular requirement at a particular time but cannot be changed without being regenerated by the author. Now, the ability to create dynamic content will change the way technical communicators envision, create, and distribute information.

Post-Implementation - Most Important

You would be forgiven for thinking that the lifespan of the typical usability project ends with final implementation and a product or website's release into the market. In one sense it does - the user-centred design process is over, and presumably the result is an easy-to-use product or site that is already yielding results. All well and good - but sometimes even the best interfaces cannot meet the changing requirements of the typical workplace. In this case, post-implementation user testing can pick up the difficulties that were not picked up first time around. At this point the client may quite rightly be wondering why these problems weren't spotted before deployment. The reason lies in the way in which the user has developed alongside the product. First impressions, whether favourable or not, may turn out to be misleading after an extended period of use.

A Better Approach: Requirements-Focused CMS Selection

Your organisation is unique, and as such, has a unique set of content management system (CMS) requirements. There is also no single 'perfect for everyone' content management system. Each product has its own set of strengths and weaknesses, and distinctive design principles. Unfortunately, the selection process followed by many organisations doesn't recognise this, leading to the purchase of a CMS which does not match business needs. Selecting a CMS does not have to be a lottery. By following a requirements-focused methodology, instead of a features-driven approach, the right CMS can be identified, and the business risks minimised.

A Consumer Survey of CMS Vendor Websites

In March 2003, an online survey was conducted of consumer opinion about CMS vendor websites. This was extensively promoted through the CMS mailing lists, and on key CMS websites such as CMS Watch, the Intranet Focus and Step Two Designs sites. In total, 168 responses were made to this survey, representing consumers from across the globe, and in every type of organisation. This briefing provides a high-level summary of the results of the survey.

A Content Management Project Presents Unique Challenges

At a basic level, implementing a content management system (CMS) is like deploying any other large software package. Fundamental project management principles must be followed, along with best practice technical guidelines. Beyond this, however, a CMS project presents a number of unique challenges. These must be recognised and addressed for the project to be successful.

The Importance of Content Management System Usability

The rollout of a content management system (CMS) has the potential to impact on more users than any other system since e-mail. More crucially, the success of a CMS depends entirely on how much it is used, whether it is authors creating content, or users accessing the published site. It is these two challenges that place usability as a central issue to be raised and addressed.

The Two Faces of Intranet Success

There are two fundamental aspects that must be satisfied if an intranet is to succeed: the intranet must meet staff needs; sufficient content and functionality must be created to meet these needs. These are the 'two faces' of the intranet, one looking towards staff and organisational needs, the other at the infrastructure and processes needed to meet it.

Manual Labor

Back when having a website was more important than having a sound business plan, Web content management systems were a must-have for large companies. IT managers bought into the idea that they needed an all-in-one system that would help them generate content, structure it, design it and publish it. But new research suggests these systems largely failed to live up to their promise. According to a recent report by Jupiter Research, 61 percent of companies that have deployed Web content management software still update their websites manually.

Needle in a Haystack

In most organizations, data is piling up by the minute: e-mails, names, addresses, transactions, you name it. As a result, finding what you need when you need it is becoming increasingly complicated, which is why more companies are deploying enterprise search tools. According to a recent report by Boston-based Yankee Group, 75 percent of businesses with more than 100 employees have some sort of enterprise search technology in place. The study also found that the bigger the organization, the more likely it is to invest in search technologies, as 91 percent of companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenue report having enterprise search capability. In 2001, a similar Yankee Group survey found that 63 percent of businesses employed search technology. In that year, enterprise search vendors generated $400 million in revenues.

Putting Content in Context

Digital asset management (DAM) software stores and organizes images, audio, video and other digital objects, making them easier to find, transform and reuse. And many companies are using DAM to provide a centralized way for employees and partners to locate and manipulate content-a big time-saver for all.

Implementing Single Sourcing in Your Organization

Single sourcing is more complex than buying a new software application. To ensure a successful migration, you must carefully understand the documentation development processes in your organization, what single sourcing is, and what software is available to facilitate it. Because you must change the way your organization creates and maintains documentation, you must sell your organization on the changes and their cost. Finally, you must develop training to help transition writers to your single sourcing methodology.

Information Modeling

Information models are a critical component of single-sourcing, enterprise content management, and dynamic content management. This session explains how to design information models, including information product models and element models. It also explains the role of metadata and how to effectively design it.

Localization of Single-Source Content

One of the key motivators of adopting a single-source approach for documentation is the potential cost savings available through the reduced cost of translation. By consolidating multiple documents, version updates, and similar products, translations may be leveraged across components. By creating single-source content with translation in mind, authors are able to create documents that are easy to localize, increase consistency, and reduce costs. The article below provides a summary of the translation benefits of single-sourcing and offers advice for designing a single-source strategy from a localization perspective.

Selecting a Content-Management System

Your output requirements will drive many of your decisions when selecting a content-management system. An abbreviated version of the checklist from JoAnn Hackos’s book, Content Management for Dynamic Delivery, follows to aid you in defining your output requirements.

SGML: More than 'Just Do It!'

The Technical Publications department of DSC Communications Corporation decided to use SGML as a method of information creation, storage, and management; obtained buy-in from management and appropriate personnel; selected and trained a team; created and implemented a project plan for an SGML prototype project.

Single Source Tools: An Integrated Solution

Tools are a key component for the success of single sourcing. Tools should be selected to support the information model and development processes. This session reviews the types of single source tools (authoring, XML, content management, output, and dynamic content engines) that are available to you today. The session presentation will review the available tools Note that the tools mentioned in this paper may change by the time of the presentation.

Single Sourcing: Our First Year

Single sourcing creates multiple documents from a single content file. Developing single-source content is an efficient way to produce documentation. This topic has stirred considerable interest among technical writers the last few years and more and more departments are adopting the process. The following experiences and advice, based upon our use of FrameMaker and WebWorks Publisher Professional, are meant to assist a documentation department that is about to begin a single-source process or is considering making this transition.

What Every Technical Communicator Should Know About Metadata

Technical Communicators who begin working with content management systems, knowledge bases, portals, data warehouses, or information retrieval systems discover they are expected to know how to work with metadata. Metadata is “data about data.” It can describe data or content (databases, data modeling, data access and reporting, data movement, data stewardship, data quality);organizations (business rules, process stewardship, data users, project management); content management and information retrieval (document properties, revision and change control, reference and navigation, document standards); and business intelligence (decision support, competitive intelligence). Metadata management can positively impact productivity and the quality of web and documentation projects.

Avoiding the Content Silo Trap™, Enterprise Content Management

Organizations frequently fall into the content silo trap, multiple authors creating similar information, in many areas of the organization. Authors rarely share their information (they work in silos) or are even aware that this information already exists elsewhere in the organization. Technical communicators have been single sourcing for years, this session looks at how to move beyond technical publications to assist your organization with enterprise content management. This session includes a case study from Eli Lilly.

An End-to-End Multilingual Content Management System

This article will not try to answer why there's no end-to-end content management solution that supports the whole process from single-source authoring to multilingual publishing. At least, it cannot be bought off-the-shelf. Only companies with the size of J.D.Edwards are able to integrate the various components. They will even find the resources and the necessary expertise to implement vital components that are not readily available on the market (e.g. multilingual terminology management system).

Use and Abuse of Reusable Learning Objects

The term Learning Object, first popularized by Wayne Hodgins in 1994 when he named the CedMA working group 'Learning Architectures, APIs and Learning Objects,' has become the Holy Grail of content creation and aggregation in the computer-mediated learning field. The terms Learning Objects (LOs) and Reusable Learning Objects are frequently employed in uncritical ways, thereby reducing them to mere slogans. The serious lack of conceptual clarity and reflection is evident in the multitude of definitions and uses of LOs. The objectives of this paper are to assess current definitions of the term Learning Object, to articulate the foundational principles for developing a concept of LOs, and to provide a methodology and broad set of guidelines for creating LOs.

From Web to Print

The Web is WYSIWYG. What you see is what you get. What you see on the monitors and via the connections - and what you use for beta testing - is what your work will look like to all those who check out your URL. What's on your screen will be pretty close to what's on their screens. Print is a different matter altogether. Once your files leave your computer, there's a whole wonderful road they have to journey along to make it into print. You do everything you can to make sure they're ready for their adventure, but just as you're likely to forget your toothbrush or your favorite socks when you take a trip, your files often go to print missing a vital item. You can only hope that the thing you forgot about is easy to correct and not a big expensive mistake that blows your deadline and your budget. Getting your files through your service bureau (where your files are turned into negatives so that your negatives ultimately become the finished product) and to the printer is like taking up the gauntlet. Best case scenario, you'll be winded; worst case, you'll be pounded to a bloody pulp. I fear I'm showing my bias toward the Web.

Add Functionality to Quick, Easy Site Deployment

More than a Web content management system, Octigon President James Smith calls Octane8 a deployment platform. What exactly can you deploy with Octane8? To name a few: public Internet sites, private intranet and extranet sites; sites for the group you'll be collaborating with for the next two weeks; sites with pages that sell; and sites with pages that inform.

Hyperlinking Documents in PageMaker

These four supertips deal with adding links to your Adobe® PageMaker® 7.0 online documents: * Learn how to create anchors and simple page-to-page links. * Explore linking to external URLs using the Hyperlinks palette. * Drag links from Netscape Navigator directly onto elements on PageMaker document pages. * Create automatic tables of contents and index links for PageMaker documents that are exported to Adobe Acrobat® PDF files.

Webworks Publisher Tutorial: Better Jumps to Topic Titles

By default Webworks Publisher uses file names and paragraph numbers as hyperlink targets, e. g. <a href='filename.html#55555'>. Most web browsers try to position the paragraph with the corresponding name anchor <a name='55555'> at the top of the screen if possible. If you jump to the top of a scrollable topic, any content above the title line (e.g. navigation graphics) is hidden. There are a few easy countermeasures.

WebWorks Publisher Tutorial: Useful Meta Tags

If you are using Webworks Publisher to create HTML pages which will be published for the WWW, you may want to place additional useful meta tags in your pages to be found and indexed by search engines and thus be found by interested persons.

Capturing Feedback: Building a Tighter Net

Describes how to use Microsoft FrontPage and Access to build a system for organizing and retrieving feedback from reviewers. The article is intended for those with some experience with Web and database design.

Managing and Delivering Your Content as Data

Houser describes several options for organizations interested in data-oriented publishing--the delivery of discrete, independent pieces of information that can be selected, manipulated, and presented to meet the needs of different audiences with different characteristics and different goals.

Fuzzy Matching as a Retrieval-Enabling Technique for Digital Libraries

This paper advocates an often-neglected search-support technique, approximate or 'fuzzy' matching of user search terms. When properly deployed, fuzzy matching can significantly enhance the benefits of other, more common approaches to end-user answer retrieval from online reference collections. We compare crude with more sophisticated approximation techniques to explain how astute fuzzy-match software can convert many different near-miss situations (such as those involving faulty prefixes or suffixes, character misplacement, nonstandard word stems, or unanticipated redescription of concepts) into more adequate results. We also suggest practical ways to overcome fuzzy matching's own major drawbacks (namely, problems with search speed, search imprecision, and misinterpretation of search results). The resulting analysis clarifies how to deploy fuzzy matching for maximum effectiveness. We conclude that appropriate fuzzy matching enables more frequent, more flexible search success than do ordinary retrieval-improvement techniques used without it.

“Hand It To Them On A Silver Platter: Meeting Researchers Needs In The Electronic Age”

This paper describes the Electronic Resource Library (ERL) at http://plutonium-erl.actx.edu. This is a web-based, subject-oriented digital library on the topic of plutonium and its ancillary disciplines. Previous research analyzing differences in the information-seeking behavior of scientists and engineers is reviewed and lessons learned applied to this digital library model. Special consideration has been given to recommendations in the SATCOM report from the National Academy of Sciences/National Academy of Engineering Committee on Scientific and Technical Communication. This report strongly advocated the development of “specialized need-groupservices” to support the work of the engineer and practitioner.

Designing Wearable Performance Support: Insights from the Early Literature

According to Gery (1991), an electronic performance support system (EPSS) is an electronic environment available to and easily accessible by employees that is structured to provide online access to all information to permit them to do their jobs with minimal intervention by others. Why do we assume that this support must be provided on a computer? If effective performance support must be 'available' and 'easily accessible,' how can designers provide support to people whose jobs require mobility? Such jobs include (but certainly are not limited to) supervising a manufacturing operation, inspecting foods, and repairing equipment. A designer for any EPSS being developed to support jobs such as these would have to take the employees' mobility into account.

Choices and Challenges: Considerations for Designing Electronic Performance Support Systems

Introduces the breadth of decision-making required in EPSS design. Explores choices and challenges facing designers in the design process, performance cycle, technology constraints, use of storytelling techniques, evaluation, and success factors.

CoRR: A Computing Research Repository

This paper describes the decisions by which the Association for Computing Machinery integrated good features from the Los Alamos e-print (physics) archive and from Cornell University's Networked Computer Science Technical Reference Library to form their own open, permanent, online “computing research repository” (CoRR). Submitted papers are not refereed and anyone can browse and extract CoRR material for free, so CoRR's eventual success could revolutionize computer science publishing. But several serious challenges remain: some journals forbid online preprints, the CoRR user interface is cumbersome, submissions are only self-indexed, (no professional library staff manages the archive) and long-term funding is uncertain.

Integrating Content Management with Portals: Meeting Enterprise Information Needs

Effective communication is a top priority for most businesses. To help create, manage, and access information that is used to conduct e-business, technologies such as content management (CM) and enterprise information portals (EIP) are dominating IT and CIO discussions. We will review how these rapidly evolving technologies come together to provide benefits for enterprise implementers. Given the historical deployment of these technologies, many associate the application of content management solutions to externally facing sites, serving transactional e-business needs; and the application of portals to internally facing sites for general employee access to a wide range of information sources and applications. However, both technologies can provide support for the complete information lifecycle, from information creation to management to delivery.

Web Content Management: Market Overview

The content management market comprises systems designed specifically to drive Web sites, including capacity planning, site design/layout, look/feel navigation, content development, production, content delivery, session tracking, and site evolution. The core focus of these products is empowering business users to create Web site content, providing processes to ensure the approval of all content and maintain its consistency/life-cycle management (B2C, B2B, B2E). WCM does not extend to the display, personalization, or associated transactions. This category expands to include Web developers, Webmasters, and site creators as well as business users. Increasingly, overlap exists with portal and other unstructured content categories (e.g., software configuration management, digital asset management, document management).

Words Drive Action: An Interview with Gerry McGovern

Gerry McGovern is a world-renowned content-management expert and author of the books, 'Content Critical' and 'The Web Content Style Guide'. User Interface Engineering's Christine Perfetti and Josh Porter recently talked with Gerry about the importance of an editorial perspective in a web development process. Here is what Gerry had to say about his experiences.

Content Repurposing with FrameMaker+SGML and XML

We see content repurposing as taking marked-up content and automatically transforming it for presentation in multiple applications. For example, one of our clients asked us to help them convert existing Word documentation into structured FrameMaker+SGML files, and then export it to a well-formed and valid XML instance. The structured FrameMaker+SGML documents would be used to create user manuals (both print and PDF), and the XML instance would be used for online documentation on PDAs or cell phones. Portions of the content would be applicable for only the printed documents, while other potions of the content would be used only for online display.

An Introduction to Single-Sourcing

A brief, high-level introduction to single-sourcing.

The Joy of Single-Sourcing

At MYOB® (Mind Your Own Business) Australia, we have just finished our first single-sourcing project using mif2go to convert FrameMaker source files to HTML Help *.chm files. These files are also the source of our printed user guide and the hyperlinked PDF of the user guide placed on the distribution CD. There was considerable once-off pain setting up conversion templates (including CSS files) and conversion options but our next project will be much faster. The converted files do not require any hand tweaking -- we just hand over to the release people to put the *.chm file on the installer CD. Our testing and support people are rapt, and consider the new help far better than the old help. It has a navigation pane with Contents, Index, Search, and Favorites tabs, a toolbar with Hide [navigation pane], Prev, Next, Back, Forward, Print, Options, and Welcome (custom Home) buttons. An outsider would have no inkling that the help was converted from FrameMaker source files as the appearance is completely different from the printed book and hyperlinked PDF. You, too, can single-source successfully provided you plan beforehand and your team understands the process.

Making a Business Case for Single Sourcing

As we learned in the February 2001 issue of Best Practices, in JoAnn Hackos' review of the book, The Balanced Scorecard, selling innovative ideas to upper management is important. The Balanced Scorecard approach includes a customer perspective, an internal-business-process perspective, and a learning and growth perspective, in addition to the financial perspective. A solid and balanced business case allows you to gain management support and reach your goal.

Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy

Today's businesses are overwhelmed with the need to create more content, more quickly, customized for more customers and for more media than ever before. Combine this with decreasing resources, time, and budgets and you have a stressful situation for organizations and their content creators. To reduce the costs of creating, managing, and distributing content and to ensure content effectively supports your organizational and customer needs, organizations can benefit from a unified content strategy. A unified content strategy is a repeatable method of identifying all content requirements up front, creating consistently structured content for reuse, managing that content in a definitive source, and assembling content on demand to meet your customers' needs.

Web Content Meets Records Management

While the Web has forever changed the way we gather information, communicate and conduct business, it's the highly dynamic and personalized Web content and the transactions performed on the Web that present records managers with the greatest challenge.

Rapid Web Development: How to Create Flexible Sites Quickly Using Standards Like CSS and XHTML

What do you do when you need to have a Web site done 'yesterday'? This article answers that question, showing you how to create sites quickly and flexibly using Web standards like cascading style sheets (CSS), structural HTML, and server-side includes. It contains examples that demonstrate how rapid Web development not only streamlines the process, but also makes updating easier.

Smarter Content Publishing: Building A Semantic Website to Increase the Efficiency and Usability of Publishing Systems

The web is not print. The need to create hypertext within pages requires more control over documents. Another is that web pages can also be applications, so access to the 'guts' of the page is needed to insert programming code. And ideally, we would like to separate presentation from content, enabling us to format the content in different ways for different purposes. How can we achieve all this with the efficiency and usability we've come to expect of other publishing tools?

Moving from Information Transfer to Knowledge Creation: A New Value Proposition for Technical Communicators

'What do technical communicators do?' asks the ambitious question on the Society for Technical Communication's FAQ Web page (STC 2001). The answer lists typical job titles for technical communicators and then says, 'All these professionals take technical information and make it understandable to those that need it.' This description is consistent with the way that many technical communicators describe their role, that of transferring information from those who have it (subject matter experts or SMEs) to those who need it, and they define the value of the technical communicator as packaging that information to be more accessible and more readily understood by the user. This article first reviews the current literature that addresses the value of the technical communicator. Whereas those discussions focus on what is delivered to the user (reader), this article examines the value the technical communicator adds by creating organization (internal) knowledge. The article then examines the philosophical underpinnings that support any discussion of knowledge and defines the role of technical communicators as creators of knowledge. Finally, it offers an expanded value proposition for technical communicators and examines its practical implications.

Manage Your Content with PHP

In this article we'll build a simple, template-driven site that separates style, content, and structure in your website. We'll create a cross-browser stylesheet switcher that remembers the user's preferences, touching on PHP variables, cookies, if statements, and including pages with require_once.

Creating An Information Model

An Information Model provides the framework for organizing your content so that it can be delivered and reused in a variety of innovative ways. Once you have created an Information Model for your content repository, you will be able to label information in ways that will enhance search and retrieval, making it possible for authors and users to find the information resources they need quickly and easily.

Single-Sourcing with FrameMaker

As a technical writer, you may be exploring single-sourcing--producing multiple document outputs from a single information source--as a possible option for easing document development and production. Although solutions such as databases, SGML, and XML are available that can enable you to reuse information to produce multiple outputs, single-sourcing doesn't have to involve such complex solutions, expenses, and learning curves. Instead, if your single-sourcing needs are relatively simple, you can effectively single-source using a tool that technical writers commonly have available: FrameMaker.

Beyond the Buzzword: Single Sourcing

Single sourcing, which has been a buzzword in technical communication for several years, is now emerging as a practical, efficient, and cost-effective method for creating multiple deliverables. You might want to consider single sourcing if you have some documentation projects that repeat, if not every one of your projects is a one-off, if you reuse some of your content, and if your budget planning includes more than just the very next project.

Simple Content Management

DON’T BE FOOLED by the title: this article covers the implementation of a complete, expandable, client-side content management system using REBOL. This system makes it easy for any website operator, regardless of experience, to update site content while keeping markup valid and consistent and ensuring that links stay pertinent. Why another CMS? I’m not a fan of the client-side content management provided by FrontPage or Dreamweaver, and server-based systems rely on server OS and software and are vulnerable to the restrictions of hosting packages. This CMS will work on any desktop system.

Content Management Systems and the Single Web Designer

Content Management is the next step in separating structure from design. What began with Cascading Style Sheets and was furthered by XML, is exploding with the CM environment, where billions were spent last year and more billions are expected to be spent in the years ahead. CM Systems come in many shapes: They can be huge or small, simple or very complex. They range from the very expensive (almost $300,000 for enterprise–wide systems like Vignette or Interwoven and $43,000 per server processor for Microsoft’s CMS to almost free (less than $1,000 for Manila and nothing for Zope). But they are all based on the same idea: CM allows designers to focus on design by building templates. Subject experts build content in a separate environment. The server takes the content, inserts it into the correct template and sends it all, neatly wrapped up, to end users.

The End of Homemade Websites

Web services will free individual site designers from having to program and design common features. This will decrease business costs, increase usability, and let designers focus on and improve features that are unique to each site.

Document (re)Presentation: Object-orientation, Visual Language, and XML

This article demonstrates how the combination of object-orientation and Horn's notions of visual language morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics may be used to analyze and describe the mapping of marked-up XML files onto user documents. The article also raises the question of whether—or to what extent—the coupling of object-orientation and visual language might be exploited more directly for design purposes in a document production paradigm based on XML.

Tips for Online Content Businesses in 2001

The online content industry has experienced its first real shakeout. Good! It toppled many high-profile online content venues and left others reeling, scrambling, and retrenching -- but it was absolutely necessary. 2001 should be an especially exciting and interesting year for the online content industry. The need for quality online content continues to expand with the Internet's popularity. However, the online content industry doesn't work like traditional media. Also, it has become painfully obvious that you really must have a solid business model to succeed in this field. Time to stop clinging to outdated assumptions about media, and to take a hard look at how online media really works. As food for thought, here are Amy's top tips for online content businesses in 2001.