Reviews

A Review of the Balsamiq Mockups wireframing application

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

Review of Screen Capture Tools

This article describes the process of capturing screens and reviews some of the leading capture tools available. It is revised annually to take account of new releases, and was last updated in February 2009.

The Global English Style Guide

A review of "The Global English Style Guide: Writing Clear, Translatable Documentation for a Global Market" by John R. Kohl.

Web Application Design Patterns

A review of "Web Application Design Patterns" by Pawan Vora.

Page Layout and Design Tips from Jean-luc Doumont’s Trees, Maps, and Theorems

Given the engineering audience, one can’t hope for too much style and flair in the prose, but it reads like a college textbook, outlining basic principles in a flat way. It is too focused on “clarity, accuracy, correctness, etc.” (p.79) to make for a fun or engaging read.

TUAW Faceoff: Screencasting

Screencasting -- the not-so-ancient art of recording the computer screen for the entertainment and enrichment of others -- has evolved into quite a Hydra of options. How do the myriad gladiators in this arena stack up? I've tried everything I could find that could record a little movement on the screen, and selected 8 contenders for the matchup.

Pre-Release Review of Flare V5

Soon MadCap Software will be releasing the next major version in the Flare product line, Flare V5. I’ve been beta testing Flare 5 for a couple of months now, and there are some great new features in Flare 5 that you are going to love. In this review, I want to point out some of my favorite new features, as well as some of Flare 5’s other great enhancements.

Web Application Design Patterns

Web Application Design Patterns by Pawan Vora provides practical user interface design guidance for developing web applications by offering a "working" starting point that designers can adapt and refine to develop creative solutions. He condenses best practice methods, along with research and solid experience to create a useful reference about designing web applications.

The Systematic Design of Instruction

The Systematic Design of Instruction is a book on Instructional Design written by Walter Dick, Lou Carey, and James O. Carey. The book introduces the fundamentals of instructional design and explains the concepts and procedures for designing, developing, and evaluating instruction.

Improving Individual and Corporate Performance

Managing a team (of writers) somehow is supposed to come naturally to those it is thrust upon. And, of course, it almost never does. Richard Hamilton has succeeded in coming up with a book that - quite effectively, and covering a wide range of topics - answers this ubiquitous question. In a very real sense, Richard’s book is the voice of experience and wisdom that should have been made available when you first got the promotion.

Fifty Years of Stupid Grammar Advice

April 16 is the 50th anniversary of the publication of a little book that is loved and admired throughout American academe. Celebrations, readings, and toasts are being held, and a commemorative edition has been released. I won't be celebrating. The Elements of Style does not deserve the enormous esteem in which it is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges from limp platitudes to inconsistent nonsense. Its enormous influence has not improved American students' grasp of English grammar; it has significantly degraded it.

How to Make a Living as a Freelance Writer

Many writers in the Triangle area dream of being their own boss, typing on a laptop by a pool on a warm day or working cozily on a couch in front of the fire when the weather is frightful. Alice Osborn, an accomplished freelance writer, wanted to dispel the myths of this perceived easy lifestyle. Alice spoke to over 50 people at February’s chapter meeting. She provided many good tips on how to get and keep jobs as a freelancer in this competitive market. For those who did not attend, her presentation is summarized below.

FrameMaker 9 Review

FrameMaker users are buzzing about FrameMaker 9. With CMYK support, CMS integration, DITA 1.1, and PDF commenting, this version is full of new functionality but is unfortunately also buggy and inconsistent. This review covers the most important new features of FrameMaker 9.

The Global English Style Guide: A Review

Many good style guides exist. Why do technical writers need another style guide? Unlike other style guides, this book covers grammatical structures, not only particular terms. The book has more than 200 pages of text (plus 4 appendices) that give detailed explanations of both good practice and bad practice.

Web Design Evolves

I have recently noticed a new breed of web design books that focus on strategy and users rather than specific programming languages or applications.

Gartner Avoids OSS Content Management Systems

I received a copy of the Gartner report on the status of the web content management system market. I am always skeptical of such reports because they are geared towards those that work in a corporate environment. The reports are also made in a manner that allows the reporting company to remove itself from any responsibility if their information on the market climate is incorrect. Gartner did not disappoint me. But they do much to disappoint those that are putting a lot of energy and effort in to the OSS Web content management market.

Herding Chickens: Innovative Techniques for Project Management

Herding Chickens: Innovative Techniques for Project Management is a different take on managing people and projects. Although the authors do pay homage to The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), published by the Project Management Institute, you will not in any way confuse their ideas and tips with the approach you find in the PMBOK.

Why Manuals Fail

A very brief review of the first edition of Edmond H. Weiss’s How to Write a Usable User Manual.

What Excellence Looks Like

Comments on the magnificent Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte.

Clear, Brief and Bold: Will Strunk’s Legacy

A masterpiece of concision so tightly written that you almost don't need to read past the table of contents.

Convergence and Emergence: 2008 IA Summit

The 2008 IA Summit was held April 10–14, at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Miami, Florida, shown in Figure 1. It had the highest attendance in the conference’s nine-year history: Over 600 people signed up for the conference run by ASIS&T (American Society for Information Science and Technology). All the signs are that information architecture (IA) is a community and a practice that is growing, and that its sister disciplines—interaction design (IxD) and experience design—are well-represented at the conference—not just in terms of attendees, but also speakers.

Calling in the Big Guns: Review of Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks

What is likely to win the most converts is the joy Wroblewski takes in designing. This impression becomes clear as you page through the book. He isn’t just an ardent evangelizer, following the rituals of going to conferences selling snake oil. He’s been there in the trenches, just like you; he’s done this a hundred, maybe a thousand times. He’s tested these ideas and provides a framework for you to use from day one. Half the battle in good form design is defending your decisions to stakeholders.

Exploring Leadership Conversations

Gail Fairhurst's book (2007) on discursive leadership is a highly welcome Gcontribution to the endeavor of establishing discourse analysis as a substantial approach to management communication. It presents a range of theories and methodologies for doing research on the central topics of leadership and on the crucial activities in management, such as instruction, mentoring, and performance appraisals. As a linguist doing research on management meetings, I would like to comment on the contribution that the book may make to theory and training in the fields of communication and management, and I wish to make some suggestions about the way forward for empirical research on discourse in management settings.

The Handbook of Mentoring at Work: Theory, Research, and Practice

By using the term 'mentoring at work,' the editors, Belle Rose Ragins and Kathy Kram, suggest that they are putting scholars in conversation with each other in their attempts to figure out what mentoring work is and how mentoring actually works.

Balanced Scorecard Step-by-Step: Maximizing Performance and Maintaining Results

Paul Niven's book is invaluable for communicators whose companies are implementing a Balanced Scorecard, and it can also provide a great deal of useful information on setting measurable goals for a staff function like communication to ensure it aligns with a company's strategy. The book provides easy-to-understand summaries of how various business processes work for communicators who want to better understand their businesses.

English for the Energy Industries: Oil, Gas, and Petrochemicals

Not only people preparing to work in the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries, but also students of industrial chemistry and chemical engineering can immensely benefit from the material provided in this coursebook and supplementary CDs.

A Review of Morae 2.0 for Usability Testing

TechSmith's recent release, Morae 2.0, features a new graphing tool, integrated satisfaction survey, and embedded task definitions. The editable marker log in Observer and the improved timeline controls in the Manager improve operator efficiency. This article highlights these and other new features of the new 2.0.

KnowGenesis Online Library for Technical Communication

What makes KnowGenesis different is, I feel, it has a potential both for the corporate needs and the non-corporate users of knowledge management (KM). On one hand, organizational and corporate knowledge is captured, processed, shared and available in many KM portals are well organized. And, in such a junction, this journal adds value to the existing knowledgebase with its own specialty.

Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools

Review of 'Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools' by Kit Brown, Brenda Huettner, and Char James-Tanny.

Successful Writing At Work: Concise Edition

Philip Kolin's purpose in writing Successful Writing at Work: Concise Edition is to introduce professional and business writing to undergraduate students who probably will not be taking other business writing courses. Kolin forgoes theory and provides ample exercises and examples. The concise edition, at 344 pages (10 chapters) and US$55, is 412 pages shorter and US$23 less than the full version, Successful Writing at Work (Kolin, 2006). While the book includes many of the important topics of the full version (such as discrete chapters devoted to letter writing, job applications, and writing procedures), the savings may not justify the loss of content and depth.

CEO-Speak: The Language of Corporate Leadership

The Language of Corporate Leadership is a study of the written discourse of CEOs that is found in annual reports, corporate Web sites, congressional testimonies, and employee newsletters. The book contains 10 case studies of CEOs' writings from past and present megacorporations, including Enron, General Electric, Microsoft, Disney, and AOL. The organizations covered in the book represent both new and old economies and include two Canadian companies and a public-sector company. The authors, Joel Amernic and Russell Craig, are accounting and business professors and appropriately focus on accounting and financial reporting aspects of CEOs' written discourse.

Communication Skills for the Processing of Words, 5th Edition

This text aims to prepare students for entry-level jobs and foster their career progress after they enter the workplace. The focus of this book is not as broad as the typical introductory text on business communication. However, this book could be the right choice for an advanced business writing course in a high school or an introductory business writing course in a college, university, or technical school. This book might also work well as a supplement in a postsecondary business communication course for use by students who either have not completed a 1st-year composition course or who have completed that course without mastering grammar, mechanics, and style. This textbook includes 18 units: 8 discuss specific types of punctuation (e.g., commas and colons); 7 cover usage and mechanics (e.g., capitalization and numbers); and 3 cover grammar (e.g., subject and verb agreement).

The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information, by Richard A. Lanham

This is a clever, witty, and engaging--if at times frustrating--book. The central thesis is that in our information age, made possible by digital technology, the scarce commodity to be allocated (and thus a matter of economics) is not 'stuff,' broadly defined as what you can kick or the information based on such stuff (also, stuff). We're drowning in stuff. Instead, it's attention that's scarce, and allocating attention is a matter of style, of rhetoric.

Ethnography at Work

Ethnographic methodology is nothing new to the field of rhetoric because the literature in the field is constantly filled with intriguing discoveries from ethnographic studies. These studies, however, usually do not focus on private businesses because of the difficulty of gaining access to these research sites. Moreover, if ethnographic studies are permitted, they usually focus on American nonprofit organizations. Thus, Ethnography at Work, by Brian Moeran, offers a unique research site--an international private business organization--that should spark interest in readers.

Farewell, Netscape, but I Suppose It's Time

Since it's been a decade since Netscape was relevant, I guess it was overdue. But that doesn't make it any easier to say goodbye to an old friend, no matter how long it's been since you had any fun together.

Rhetorical Grammar, 5th Edition

Throughout the book, Kolln works to build the readers' confidence and encourage them to think of grammar as a tool. Rhetorical Grammar is a textbook for undergraduate students, and Kolln keeps this target audience in mind by making the 322- page book user-friendly.

Starring the Text: The Place of Rhetoric in Science Studies

Given Alan G. Gross's substantial contributions to the rhetoric of science, most recently with Joseph E. Harmon and Michael Reidy (2002) in Communicating Science, I looked forward to reading Gross's latest work, Starring the Text: The Place of Rhetoric in Science Studies--until I read the preface. In the preface, Gross notes that Starring the Text is not a new con- tribution but a 'major refiguring' (p. ix) of his earlier work The Rhetoric of Science (1990). Like most readers, I am decidedly less enthusiastic about reading a revision of an older contribution than I am about reading a new contribution.

SQL Server Integration Services Using Visual Studio

Beginners Guide to SQL Server Integration Services Using Visual Studio 2005 provides you with the basic knowledge that you should have before you move on to more advanced ETL [Extraction, Transformation, and Loading]. The book will also provide you with a comprehensive description of the many designer windows that you may encounter while working with the designer. This guide provides the building blocks describing each block by way of an example as well as describing the nuts and bolts that bind the blocks. A majority of SSIS tasks are covered in this book and they are described fully in the summary of table contents section. You start building packages right from Chapter 2 and continue on to Chapter 20 gathering and building upon your knowledge in each step.

GUI Bloopers 2.0: Common User Interface Design DON'Ts and DO's

GUI Bloopers 2.0 describes common user-interface mistakes found in today's software products and services, and provides design rules and guidelines to avoid them. Johnson describes the design decisions that lead to misuse of controls, poor navigation, prose-riddled labels, bad design and layout, faulty interaction, and poor responsiveness. GUI Bloopers 2.0 is well illustrated with hundreds of examples from real products and online services, and stories from his own experience.

High Performance Web Sites

Implement these techniques and your sites will be faster. They won't be just a little zippier--we're talking orders of magnitude here.

Bridging the Gap between Cultural Studies Theory and the World of the Working Practitioner

Cultural studies is an academic field that focuses on understanding the unchallenged assumptions that constrain and shape communication and related interactions among people. Although the field has made considerable progress in the last half-century, many practitioners have either never encountered the field, or have encountered it only through extremist advocates who do the field a great disservice. As a result, they have lost the ability to benefit from the insights provided by cultural studies. In this paper, I review the recent book Critical Power Tools to provide an update on the current thinking in the field, and to demonstrate how the modern form of the field has much to teach technical communications practitioners who are willing to listen to what the theoreticians have to say.

Comments on: Selker, Rosenzweig, and Pandolfo (2006). "A Methodology for Testing Voting Systems"

In the article, 'A Methodology for Testing Voting Systems' (JUS, November 2006, pp7-21), Selker, Rosenzweig, and Pandolfo discuss their methodology for usability testing of voting systems. With so much at stake in the usability of our ballots and voting systems, we can only applaud any research in this field. There is little history of research in this area, so discussions of test protocols are especially valuable. Unfortunately, although this article sets out to compare 'the relative merit in realistic versus lab style experiments for testing voting technology,' it falls short of this goal. If their point is that real-world testing is important because real election environments add burdens that are not present in lab settings, this conclusion is not supported by any of the work described.

Cladonia Exchanger XML Editor 3.2

Having spent some time working with Cladonia's Exchanger XML Editor, I can attest to the claim that this is a good, solid, well-featured and extensible XML editor. However, the software is not suitable for authoring documents. It is designed for working with XML data in many forms, but it is not designed for textual content. Let me explain.

XMLmind XML Editor v3.0

XMLmind is a great introductory tool for technical writers entering the world of structured authoring and DocBook. It successfully hides the esoterics of XML markup from the author, so that the focus can be on the words, rather than the code. At no cost (yes, absolutely free) for the Standard edition, and USD220 for a single user licence for the Professional Edition, XMLmind offers excellent value. The software is available for Linux, Windows and Mac. There are two main problems with XMLmind XML Editor: it does not currently support DITA schemas, and it does not incorporate a (Notepad-like) text editor in case you do need to patch up your code.

Bridging the Gap between Cultural Studies Theory and the World of the Working Practitioner

Beautiful Evidence

Beautiful Evidence is Edward Tufte's fourth and latest book and both follows and diverges from the directions established with The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (Tufte, 1983), Envisioning Information (Tufte, 1990), and Visual Explanations (Tufte, 1997). Visual Display examined pictures of numbers, Envisioning explored pictures of nouns, and Visual Explanations addressed pictures of verbs. Beautiful Evidence foregoes the 'pictures of' approach and instead establishes the role of evidence as the foundation of reasoning. In some ways, this latest book might have been better positioned as the first book because of its efforts to explain interplays of understanding and reasoning.

The Hidden History of Information Management

What strategies has society employed to collect, manage, and store information, even with the constant threat of oversupply, and still make this information accessible and meaningful to people over time?

Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine

Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine is a fine introduction to the burgeoning field of medical rhetoric and an excellent addition to the annals of rhetorical criticism in general. Written by Judy Z. Segal from the University of British Columbia, the work is solidly grounded in the mainstay rhetorical traditions of Burke, Perelman and Olbrects-Tyteca, Booth, and Aristotle. But Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine is hardly conservative in its mission or methodology, and the result is a work that captures the essence of discursive encounters in medicine, especially those between doctors and patients and their families, and yet unabashedly attempts to reform these encounters for the betterment of all parties involved.

Internet-Based Workplace Communications: Industry and Academic Applications

Internet-Based Workplace Communications: Industry and Academic Applications, edited by Kirk St.Amant and Pavel Zemliansky, is a collection of essays that aims to bridge a gap between academic and industry understandings of the role of digital technologies in business and technical communication. The essays consider the implications of new online communication technologies for classroom and workplace practices. Although the essays are geared toward an academic audience and do not offer a comprehensive look at Internet-based workplace practices, the collection can serve as a starting point for educators who would like to discuss in their technical communication courses the implications of integrating Internet technologies into contemporary communication practices.

Design Is Rocket Science

Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction is cunningly released at a time when acceptance of Interaction Design as a discipline is reaching a critical mass. The book precipitates a huge turn in the creation of interactive technologies toward the more research/creative or human-centric model, approaching the subject of this change from different angles and illuminating historical insights.

Demolition Derby

I started The Myths of Innovation in a positive frame of mind, generated by my interest in the topic (and the excitement of seeing my photos in print). I ended the book similarly enthusiastic. While it isn't a long read (I started in Cambridge and finished before I touched down in Los Angeles), good books don't need a lot of words to make their point. Scott Berkun clearly presents his arguments, demolishing many of the misconception about innovation. For those of us running businesses or developing new products, it's a must-read.

User Experience in Brazil - USIHC 2007

Brazil was the site of the seventh International Conference of Ergonomics and Usability, Interface Design, and Human Computer Interaction. Held in the seaside city of Balneario Camboriu in the southern Brazil state of Santa Caterina, the conference was hosted by the Universidade do Valle do Itajai (UNIVALI). I was fortunate to be invited to participate in the conference.

The Nurnberg Funnel by John M. Carroll

In the Nurnberg Funnel: Designing Minimalist Instruction, John Carroll presents some helpful ideas based on some useful research on how the initial self-instruction (often called 'tutorials') should be developed and written.

MadCap Flare and the RoboHelp Saga

This article is a review of presentations that Mike Hamilton gave at the Berkeley and East Bay STC chapters in December 2006. Hamilton also gave a presentation about MadCap Flare at the San Francisco chapter in August 2006.

Questioning the Motives of Technical Communication and Rhetoric: Steven Katz's 'Ethic Of Expediency'

By emphasizing the negative meanings of words, ignoring variations in translations, and quoting out of context, Steven B. Katz has argued in an influential article that an 'ethic of expediencyunderlies technical communication and deliberative rhetoric, and by extension writing pedagogy and practice based on it.' Katz's assertion misrepresents the motive of technical communication and its pedagogy, and it brings discredit to the professions of technical communication and the teaching of technical communication. His attempt to discredit the motive of technical communication is part of a two-millennia-long contest for status between intellectuals and the working classes, and it creates unnecessary mistrust at a time in history when people must focus even more on cooperating socially in order to sustain democratic cultures and our physical environment for future generations.

Everything and the Kitchen Sink

I've used personas for years (though some might regard my process as a slightly heretical perversion of the method). I always think about the big picture, and I was just thinking BIG about personas at work when The Persona Lifecycle landed on my desk. Given my review of what's out there, The Persona Lifecycle is the most comprehensive book on personas I've come across. If you're so inclined, it can taking you from novice to expert. The authors, Jonathan Pruit and Tamara Adlin, take advantage of extensive teaching experience and punctuate their discussion with lots of real-world examples, case studies, anecdotes, bright ideas and handy guidelines. That being said, it's not an easy read, and it's not for everybody.

Zen and the Art of Information Architecture

New Web 2.0 interaction design can offer a lot of new suggestions for easier interactions, good use of white space and other glaring design solutions to the typically very busy space of information architecture. But, if you practice IA well, including some new Web 2.0 techniques, you can begin to create mental space as well as white space. Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design, a new New Riders book by Robert Hoekman, Jr., is a great place to find out how much mental space can be offered by your systems.

IA Summit 2007: Part I

In 2006, I attended my first Information Architecture (IA) Summit. It was the best of the many conferences I attended that year, making this year's conference a must-attend event.

Information Dashboard Design

Stephen Few's Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data defines the state-of-the-art of information dashboard design. Few, who is an expert in data visualization for the communication and analysis of quantitative business information has provided a complete, practical, and illuminating guide to dashboard design. If you are designing front-ends for executive information systems for Business Performance Management (BPM) or for monitoring and analyzing the performance of sales, marketing, or information systems, Information Dashboard Design provides all you need to know to ensure your dashboards communicate efficiently and effectively.

Effective Prototyping for Software Makers

Effective Prototyping for Software Makers is an ambitious undertaking that in some ways redefined the meaning of prototyping for me. No reader is likely to absorb this tome from cover to cover--certainly not in one sitting and maybe never. The authors have tried to include as much information as possible on the topic, resulting in an extensive reference that paradoxically leaves me unsatisfied.

The STC 54th Annual Conference

What I saw was a society of professionals emerging from a process of reflection and redefinition with a vitality and momentum that said, "There's a new sheriff in town, and she's brought the posse with her." The sheriff is Susan Burton, the new STC Director.

STC Technical Communication Summit, Usability Track

The best part of my experience at the STC Summit was meeting people who, like me, are craving information on the trends of which we are such a large part--such as Web 2.0, user-centered design, and new software tools. For the most part, I got the information I craved. As a technical writer who is professionally heading deep into usability and user interface (UI) design, I actually went to the conference for the usability certificate program.

Law and Internet Cultures

Kathy Bowrey's Law and Internet Cultures critically deconstructs the law in the context of legal culture, and especially looks at how U.S. law, practice, and culture has influenced technology law. Bowrey, a lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales, writes as an "Australian author" but her analysis clearly contains a global perspective as she looks to global structures and laws in other countries such as the United States. The book's analysis draws upon an incredibly broad range of literature including but not limited to traditional "literature" (e.g., Orwell's 1984), economic analysis, communications theory, and cultural studies. She stretches her analysis, connecting the heretofore disconnected (like Foucault, Coombe, Mandeville's travels, Napster, Grokster, etc.) and makes these horizontal connections in the context of discussions of verticality--like globalization, international standards, international patent norms, and global governance. The reading will be difficult for folks without a solid background in information technologies and law (and is just plain difficult for reasons mentioned below), but Bowrey does provide at least brief definitions and description of acronyms where need be. She tends to begin chapters with details and then brings things together at chapter's end--but this strategy seems to work for the complex subject matter. This is a great book for reading out of order or skipping to particularly relevant sections. Each section of each chapter can hold together on its own. Numerous diagrams and illustrations add to the flavor of this unique and much-needed book.

INDLISH: A Book for Every English-Speaking Indian

At last, a book on what ails English in India! Why do we speak the way we do? Why do we switch to the passive voice in English, though we keep to the active in our mother tongues? Why are our letters long and wordy and yet can't get the point across? Why are our textbooks so wordy, and yet so vacuous?

There Must be Many I's in Today's Small UX teams: Jared Spool at NYC UPA

Jared Spool led the NYC UPA membership in an energetic discussion of user experience successes and failures. Comments ranged widely but centered on three main questions.

Designing for Interaction

Dan Saffer's Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices was an ambitious undertaking. In fewer than 300 pages, he has attempted to cover the history, current practice, and notions about the future of the rapidly evolving discipline of interaction design (IxD). Whether you are simply curious about interaction design, are entering the profession yourself, or are collaborating with an interaction designer, Designing for Interaction is a good place to start your journey down the road of interaction design.

Designing Interfaces

Over the past few years, I have come to appreciate the power patterns have as a shorthand that lets software engineers communicate their design intentions. Being able to discuss an Observer or Factory pattern with other engineers quickly moves the design discussion to more substantive concerns.

Faceted Metadata for Information Architecture and Search

Sometimes first impressions are a great way to gauge the likelihood of a successful experience. This wasn't one of those times. I was deeply concerned that I'd signed myself up for some esoteric discussion on the proper use of metadata, but pleasantly surprised to find a real-world interface solution for dealing with large information collections--exactly what the summary said this course would cover.

Paper Prototyping

Carolyn Snyder's Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces provides the only complete guide to paper prototyping. It teaches you everything you need to know to successfully do paper prototyping and offers many practical tips. However, only about a third of the book is actually about doing paper prototyping. The majority of the book's content comprises a basic reference on usability testing. While some of the information on usability testing describes how to test paper prototypes, most of it is applicable to any type of usability testing. If you're already an expert in usability testing, you may not find this information as useful, but Snyder has honed her approach to usability testing over her many years of experience as a usability professional and provides a wealth of practical information.

The Persona Lifecycle: Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design

The Persona Lifecycle describes the value of personas, and offers detailed techniques and tools to conceive, create, communicate, and use personas to create [great] product designs. John Pruitt and Tamara Adlin provide examples, samples, and illustrations for persona practitioners to imitate and model. It is important to emphasize that the use of personas is a method that compliments other user-centered design techniques, including user testing, scenario-based design, and cognitive walkthroughs.

Build Your Own Standards Compliant Website Using Dreamweaver 8

Rachel Andrew’s book is quite unconventional. Why? It takes Adobe’s Dreamweaver, the most-popular WYSIWYG web page IDE, and takes it on a long, hard-coding drive to create standards-compliant websites. Suffice to say, this book is intended for an intermediate to advanced-skilled audience.

The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation

If you are still struggling to decode the complex jargon and structure of English grammar with a long list of reference books, relax. The long wait for a reader-friendly book on English grammar is over. With her straightforward and perfectly-logical approach, Jane Straus reveals the mysteries of grammar and punctuations in her book The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation. The book is extremely well-organized, allowing readers to quickly locate the required topics. Concepts are described in clear and simple phrases, backed with examples from everyday language usage.

Managing your Documentation Projects

Documentation projects require a significant amount of coordination and planning, and managers often find themselves faced with the challenge of successfully integrating a range of new elements including international legal requirements, new players, budgets and scheduling demands to make a product successful. Most often they look around for solutions to develop an effective strategy for their documentation projects that places control in their hands.

Knowledge Management Systems: A Text Mining Perspective

Hsinchun Chen, in his book Knowledge Management Systems: A Text Mining Perspective, has made knowledge management look simple and understandable.

Review of Cladonia Exchanger XML Editor

This article is a review of the Exchanger XML Editor version 3.2 from the Cladonia company. Being such a broad field, the XML Editor category is necessarily far-reaching, and can cover both database management systems and authoring tools. For this reason, this review narrows the scope by looking at the suitability of Exchanger for use by technical communicators and Help authors to create and edit manuals, user guides and Help systems. Much of the focus of this article is therefore on the software's suitability for DocBook or DITA authoring, and its appropriateness for users without coding skills.

Review of Screen Capture Tools

Describes the important attributes of a capture tool and examines and compares the features of five popular products.

Write Your Way to Riches: How to Make Money as a Technical Writer

Write Your Way to Riches gives you comprehensive, step-by-step details on how to make money as a technical writer. Technical writing is one of the highest paid writing professions, and it's easy to get into.

Agile Documentation: A Pattern Guide to Producing Lightweight Documents for Software Projects

In Agile Documentation, Rüping gets to the heart of the documentation dilemma, offering a two-word solution: minimum necessary.

Degunking Microsoft Office

Degunking Microsoft Office, by Christina Palaia and Wayne Palaia, addresses the problem of anything that slows down the computer, interferes with your operations, crashes applications, or loses data, and presents some ways of avoiding it.

Creating Conceptual Comics: Storytelling and Techniques

How often can you say you truly learned something completely new in a design workshop? For me, it had been a long time. But there I was, working hands-on with paper and pencil, dreaming up great ideas, and experimenting with visual communication in a medium I hadn't before seriously considered for the purpose. If you have a chance to attend this workshop, do it! If nothing else, it'll help you remember why you wanted to be a designer in the first place.

e-Video: Producing Internet Video as Broadband Technologies Converge

e-Video is divided into four major sections: Opportunity, Production, Compression, and Delivery. Although these can (and must) get a bit technical to be useful, I found Alesso's style understandable.

Getting to Know the XSL Family of Standards: A Review of The XSL Companion

If you need to learn XSL, or think it might be a career-enhancing move, there are currently very few books that describe XSL. In fact, some of these books can be overwhelming in size and in programming detail. The XSL Companion is different, and, I feel, aptly named a 'companion'.

Toward a "New Deal" for Copyright for an Information Age

A century of Congressional deference to industry-negotiated compromises has produced, Litman argues, a copyright law that is both incomprehensible and unfair. This incomprehensibility might be tolerable if copyright law governed only commercial relations among industry participants, all of whom can have copyright counsel. To the extent that copyright law applies to the conduct of ordinary persons, its incomprehensibility presents serious difficulties. Moreover, to the extent that copyright law makes illegal many ordinary activities of individuals--for example, making private copies of music for oneself or to share with a friend or forwarding articles to friends via the Internet--it has become unfair as well. In Digital Copyright, she outlines a framework for a copyright law that would be a new and better deal for the public and would be short, comprehensible, and normative in character.

WebWorks versus RoboHelp: a Comparison by One FrameUser

I would say that the two products are more or less equal in the template creation category, with RH having some advantages. On the other hand, WWP is much more usable, customizable, and faster in the generation/compilation department. Given that template creation is done very seldom, and generation/compilation is done frequently, its advantages in this area make WWP the better product.

Hacking Google Maps

A new book in the popular O'Reilly 'Hacks' series shows you how to find and create your own mashups, overlaying all kinds of interesting information on Google maps.

LaTeX: An Introduction

LaTeX is not a word processor. It is a document preparation system for high quality typesetting. It is most often used for scientific documents.

Review of 'Podcasting Solutions: Complete Guide to Podcasting'

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Podcasting Solutions: A Complete Guide to Podcasting by Michael W. Goeghegan and Dan Klass. I was able to digest the material quickly. The frustrating thing for me was that the title just didn't seem to fit the approachable and practical content that made the book such a treasure. For example, the subtitle 'A Complete Guide' is a bit overstated, because it is not a compendium but a getting starting guide. Especially as time goes by and the field progresses, and more techniques and tools are developed, this book will become more out of date.

AcosHelp: Context Sensitive Online Help with PDF Files

PRC AcosHelp is the World's first 'single source' Windows online help system that allows you to use Adobe Acrobat PDF files for context sensitive online help. AcosHelp is very useful for Document Management systems, where the documents are stored as PDF-files.

Coherence, Continuity, and Cohesion: Theoretical Foundations for Document Design by Kim Sydow Campbell

A review of Kim Sydow Campbell's book Coherence, Continuity, and Cohesion: Theoretical Foundations for Document Design.

The Art of Project Management

Can project management be an art? Has Berkun truly created a jargon-free guide for the whole project team? Kalbach leads us through the high-level tasks and the major milestones of this new book, while keeping us on task.

Communication Reference Books for Engineers and Scientists

Over the past years, many reference books have been published for various science and engineering disciplines. Based on publishers’ descriptions, I selected four for review.

Textbooks for Business and Technical Writing Courses

Those of us involved in teaching the survey course in business and technical writing--one which encompasses a wide range of documents--frequently wonder if we are using the best textbook for our purposes.

Professional Blogging

There's a new blog out there that looks promising—professional bloggers can now turn to Performancing for advice. This new blog is focused on professional blogging by offering keywords tips, advice about headline styles, and how to increase your blog traffic.

Review of "User Interface Design for Programmers"

This is ostensibly a review of Joel Spolsky's book "User Interface Design for Programmers" by way of a comparison with Jef Raskin's "The Humane Interface."

Review of Nine Books on Digital Photography

This article reviews the following books on digital photography: Shoot like a pro!: Digital photography techniques by Julie Adair King; Digital photography bible: Desktop edition by Dan Simon; How to do everything with digital photography by Dave Huss; Total digital photography: The shoot to print workflow handbook by Serge Timacheff and David Karlin; The practical guide to digital imaging: Mastering the terms, technologies, and techniques by Michelle Perkins; Digital photography expert: Light and lighting by Michael Freeman; The essential lighting manual for digital and film photographers by Chris Weston; Digital photography expert: Close-up photography by Michael Freeman; Professional techniques for black & white digital photography by Patrick Rice.

Making Digital Type Look Good

'Typography is entirely about the business of detailing,' writes Bob Gordon, and he practices what he preaches in this attractive and well-designed book.

Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications

Microsoft is one of the largest software companies in the world. Thus, with their rich experience in documentation it is only natural that they share it with the rest of the IT industry. The Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications, Third Edition (MSTP) is the latest step in this direction and takes care of latest technologies and technical terms.

Spying for Words

Want to know more abou words? Or want some more brilliant snippets? Log on to The Word Spy. It is a site maintained by Paul McFedries, the well-known author and word-follower.

Minimalism and Documentation

What is minimalism? Is minimalist documentation 'risky,' and if so, what can be done to mitgate the risk? Was the structure of Windows 95's Help based on John Carroll's Minimalist Model or was 'the result' more a Microsoft business decision -- or a bit of both?

PC Annoyances, Second Edition

It's impossible to have the answers to all the problems you encounter on a PC, but Bass touches on a bit of everything.

Bosworth's Web of Data

In a Thursday morning keynote at the MySQL Users Conference 2005, Google's Adam Bosworth advocated an open model for data. Although he was not referring to open source, he expanded upon the example by explaining that customers like open source software because of the transparency.

The Study Technology

A book covering the barriers to study and their handling.

Are Weblogs Changing Our Culture?

As modern as they are in their instantaneity, blogs, like e-mail, seem winningly old-fashioned to me.

Review of Writing at the Edge: Student Webs from Brown University

In Writing at the Edge, George Landow has provided a hypertext that is both in and about hypertext.

To Create a Website

"2 Create a Website" has many different facets. One of the best things this site provides is a detailed step-by-step resource that leads the user through the process of setting up, creating, and maintaining a Web site.

Free Guide to Color Printing

3M Imaging has come out with a pamphlet that explains these color anomalies and more. And best of all, it's free.

Scientific Style Manual Aspires to International Scope

Despite what some U.S. editors may see as flaws or debatable recommendations, sooner or later anyone who edits scientific writing will consult Scientific Style and Format. Some may disagree with its style conventions, but they can be defended as serving the editors' stated goal of achieving a uniform international style for scientific publications.

A Handful of New Style and Usage Guides

Style and usage guides seem to have proliferated, and it's not always easy to discriminate between the valuable and the less so at a glance. Here are three that have come to hand recently and deserve mentioning for different reasons.

Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies

If your Web site is not designed for or understood by a global audience, you are excluding an estimated 200 million people, according to John Yunker in Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies.

Designing Web Sites for Every Audience

Author Ilise Benun looks at the web from a refreshing perspective, tying marketing and usability together through a common interest in understanding the people who use a web site.

Leonardo’s Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies

Anyone who knows Ben Shneiderman and the activities of the Human Computer Interface Lab (HCIL) would expect he would produce a book like Leonardo's Laptop. Twenty years ago as founding director of HCIL, Shneiderman was in the avant-garde of bringing together experts in computer science, engineering, psychology, and education to develop computers and their interfaces to better serve human needs.

Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces

If you want to learn about paper prototyping from a renowned practitioner then I highly recommend Paper Prototyping by Carolyn Snyder. Snyder advocates paper prototyping because it’s easy to design (requires minimal drawing skills), cheap to create (needs only paper and markers), and offers and opportunity for developers and users to evaluate design concepts. If you wonder where the beginning of the design process starts, it begins when great minds meet and brainstorm ideas, and drawing is a natural approach to illustrate them.

Reshaping Technical Communication: New Directions and Challenges for the 21st Century

Reshaping Technical Communication: New Directions and Challenges for the 21st Century by Barbara Mirel and Rachel Spilka, eds. offers great insights that might help you gain an understanding of how each world operates, why they operate as they do, and how the two worlds affect and can alter the future of technical communication.

The Elements of User Experience

By advocating a balanced blend of usability, creativity, and business sensibility, this book is a worthwhile introduction—or re-introduction—to the process of creating successful user experiences.

Making the Web Work: Designing Effective Web Applications

Those new to the field of user-centered design will find this book most useful; intermediate or advanced practitioners looking for in-depth information specific to web applications may want to look elsewhere.

Online Education

A collection of reviews of writings about online education.

Medical Writing in Drug Development: A Practical Guide for Pharmaceutical Research

When I first saw this book, I was surprised that it was so slim. When you think of medical texts, you immediately imagine a volume of 600 pages or more. But Robert Bonk has been able to distill his information into a readable volume. All of the information is right there, easy to access, with no jargon cluttering the way.

Starting a Business

Have you ever worked for a mismanaged company? Are you flexible, yet persistent? Save some startup capital and you, too, can be a successful entrepreneur, say some local business owners who shared their tips and war stories with Four Lakes members at the Oct. 16 meeting.

A Tech Writer Crosses Over to Marketing and Becomes a "Webinarian"

Have you ever considered taking on marketing duties at your present job, or even transitioning to a new career as a 'marketeer'? Wistfully, you dream of sipping martinis with your attractive new coworkers under the department’s neon sign, 'Marketing—Two Drink Minimum,' before heading home empty-handed at 5 p.m. Oh, wait a minute—that was a Dilbert cartoon.

A Review of Free, Online Accessibility Tools

This article reviews eight, free, online web accessibility tools and examines the general characteristics of accessibility tools. The review provides a comparison between tools, and offers suggestions as to which tool would be appropriate for each of the following audiences: web designers, web developers and web evaluators.

Designing With Web Standards

Jeffrey Zeldman shows us how we should be doing things, plain and simple.

Lift NNg Edition

If you are serious about getting your web site accessible, you need to get the right tools for the job. Can Lift for Dreamweaver deliver the goods?

Assessing Quality Documents

In recent years, an emphasis on quality has emerged in a variety of organizations and in several fields, including technical documentation. Producing Quality Technical Information (PQTI) was one of the first comprehensive discussions of the quality of documentation. An important contribution of the book is in identifying quality as multiple, measurable dimensions that can be defined and measured (previous views of quality identified it more as some elusive thing that could be identified if present but was difficult to articulate and describe). Despite its contributions to the quality discussion, PQTI runs the risk of simplifying the quality process, reducing quality to a simple checklist that information developers can use to develop effective documentation. PQTI fails to address the fluid nature of some aspects of quality: some dimensions that are important in assessing one document may be less important or irrelevant with other documents. Additionally, PQTI falls short of accounting for the larger contextual framing of documents--that the importance of individual dimensions of quality changes depending upon the audience, context, and purpose of the document.This commentary suggests that all quality efforts should be grounded in customer data and user-centered design processes, and that we should learn to better differentiate among quality dimensions, determining those dimensions that are essential to customer satisfaction and those that are merely attractive. Through increased attention to developing the quality of information, organizations can better differentiate their products and services, facilitate greater productivity, and increase customer satisfactions, all significant activities in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Commentary on: "Little Machines: Understanding Users Understanding Interfaces"

Online materials, as Johnson-Eilola points out, too often provide speed but neither learning nor conceptual information. Minimum information is often provided in help systems because there are no resources to provide more. But the result is often a system that, without any conceptual information, provides little more than help that is so obvious that it ceases to be helpful. Even when resources are constrained, help systems should, at a minimum, refer to external sources that can help users with important concepts behind the tasks they are trying to perform.

The Metaphysics of Information Quality: Comments on Producing Quality Technical Information

The expressed promise in the title of Producing Quality Technical Information is that following its prescriptions will yield 'quality' technical information. This commentary asks what the term quality means here and whether the manual delivers on its promise. In other words, which of the several senses of quality is intended in the title, and the does the publication deliver as promised? That is, which of the major quality schemes corresponds to the rationale of the text: legalistic quality, in which quality is conformity to a long list of detailed regulations and specifications (as in ISO 9000); principle-based quality, in which quality is the result of working according to a small set of broad precepts; or mystical quality, in which quality is an indefinable property or spiritual construct, toward which virtuous people should aspire.

Our Little Help Machines and Their Invisibilities

This paper examines the four kinds of invisibility Johnson-Eilola associates with minimalist help systems: fast information access that reduces user reflection and questioning, impersonal writing style that assumes the Shannon-Weaver communication model, narrow scope that leads to training but not teaching, and interface designs that oversimplify user tasks. For each of the four, the paper questions Johnson-Eilola's conclusions. Ultimately, the problems with truncated online help systems may disappear, as help systems are increasingly linking to the web, where adequate conceptual information is often supplied and opportunities for a social context for help are available.

Quality Technical Information: Paving the Way for Usable Print and Web Interface Design

Principles of information style and design have been around for years. Look at the shelf life of Strunk and White's classic The Elements of Style, published in 1959 and still a bestseller. Producing Quality Technical Information is a gem of a book, whose precise, bullet-style list of seven requirements and a checklist is now even more insightful in the fast-paced world of online information and the World-Wide Web. As a writer, I'm amazed how the IBM authors crystallized the essence of good information design in less than 100 pages. This commentary describes how the book's seven qualities and thirty individual requirements can easily and usefully be extrapolated to address key issues of interface design and usability for today's professional designers and developers.

Response to the Commentaries on Producing Quality Technical Information: The Common Sense of Producing Quality Technical Information

The editor and principal writer of Producing Quality Technical Information (1983) responds to the commentaries: answering questions about the sources of PQTI; discussing what the System Information group at IBM's Santa Teresa Laboratory were doing about usability from 1979 to 1983; comparing the predecessor nine 'ease-of-use factors' with the seven 'qualities' of PQTI and the nine 'quality characteristics' of Prentice Hall's subsequent editions of PQTI, published under the title Developing Quality Technical Information; and revealing his own motives and thought processes in working on several usability initiatives in the laboratory at that time, including the publication of PQTI.