Technical Writing

AODC 2006 Report

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Colin Ramsden, May 2006.

I recently attended the 9th Australasian Online Documentation and Content (AODC) conference held in Cairns on the 3rd to the 5th May 2006. About 66 fellow documentation developers including technical writers, editors, help authors, content managers, web designers and people with associated documentation interests from Australia and New Zealand were present.

An expert group of speakers from Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, shared their knowledge and expertise in documentation techniques and technologies over a broad expanse of documentation subject matter covering:

  • structured authoring techniques
  • practical XML
  • DIY usability
  • editing
  • word abuse
  • Vista Help
  • single sourcing
  • wikis, blogs, and collaborative authoring
  • flowcharting
  • case studies

To help make sense of these diverse subjects, the conference sessions were grouped into six categories:

  1. Techniques

  2. Technologies

  3. Tools

  4. Usability

  5. XML, Structured Authoring

  6. Case studies

Tip Tip

The links in the list above take you to an introductory explanation of the presentations below.

Note Note

The code in brackets after each presentation title indicates the day and session the presentation was given. For example, W1 represents the first session on Wednesday.

Jump across to a separate website on the internet Download the presentation of this report in PowerPoint format (4472Kb Please allow time to download).

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Using Storyboards and Prototypes (W3)

Scott DeLoach, User First

Prototypes and storyboards are a proven method of reducing development time and cost for computer applications, online Help, and online training. Prototyping is also one of the four essential user-design activities as recognised by ISO standard 13407. In this session, you will learn how to create and use high- and low-fidelity prototypes and storyboards. We will discuss the difference between a storyboard and a prototype, how both are used in other professions, and how to use them to solve design problems. You will also receive time-saving prototyping and storyboarding development tools, and tips and tricks for effective prototype testing.

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Minimum Code, Maximum Benefit (W5)

Dave Gash, HyperTrain Dot Com

Don't you just love long, involved, complex scripts that are hard to understand, tricky to set up, and impossible to maintain? No? This session presents a plethora, a surfeit, a myriad - a superfluity, even! - of compact JavaScripts, HTML tags and attributes, CSS rules, and other coding constructs that are small but mighty. You'll see how to easily insert and manipulate efficient, manageable bits of code that can significantly improve your pages' appearance and behaviour. These snippets may be tiny, but they actually get useful work done inside Web pages and Help topics without taxing your browser, your bandwidth, or your brain!

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User Assistance Toolkit (T4A)

Matthew Ellison, Matthew Ellison Consulting

This session describes the set of essential tools and utilities that all user assistance professionals should have on their computers. As well as explaining the different types of tools that you'll need, the session provides guidance on selecting the specific products that address your requirements most effectively. You'll hear about HTML editors, screen capture utilities, image editors, de-compilers, and a range of other invaluable tools and utilities - some of which are available to download for free!

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Web Technology Update (F1)

Joe Welinske, WritersUA

Open source technologies continue to grow in popularity. The many standards developed through the auspices of the World Wide Web Consortium are now integral components of today's software development. XML, XSLT, CSS, XHTML, WAI, and a host of other acronyms represent technologies that are constantly improving and evolving. This session is designed to brief user assistance professionals on the latest updates to relevant efforts of the W3C.

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The Editing Workout - Trimming Toning and Tweaking (F3)

Jill Nicholson, N&H Communications

In the whirlwind of new technologies it is easy to lose sight of the most basic element of professional writing: the fact that it must communicate clearly. All the tools in the world are of limited value if we, as communicators, cannot communicate. If writing for the Web and online applications has taught us anything, it is the value of brevity and simplicity. It should be no surprise to find that no one wants to read 40 word sentences (let alone 400 word paragraphs) on the Web. In this session, we take a light-hearted look at the editing process that will give you a series of fixes guaranteed to improve writing. If you are a writer, you will become more aware of problems that contribute to foggy readability. If you are an editor and are asked for a quick fix, these techniques are what you need.

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Structured Authoring (W4)

Joe Welinske, WritersUA

Structured authoring is an approach to documentation that takes advantage of many of the presentation and delivery possibilities offered by XML. Structured authoring and XML enable organisations to define and enforce standard content structures, improve content reusability, and streamline the single-sourcing process. This session provides an overview of structured authoring concepts. It includes a brief discussion of XML and related concepts, such as schemas, elements, attributes, and hierarchical documents. You will learn the various definitions of "structured authoring", what documents are suited to structured authoring, how to implement a structured authoring techniques, and how (and if) authoring tools can help manage structured authoring projects. Understanding the challenges and benefits of structured authoring will help you assess whether it is an appropriate technique in your own organisation.

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Longhorn Help in the Big Picture (T2A)

Robert Chandler, Microsoft Help MVP

Assessing the future impact of Help for Microsoft Longhorn can be helped by understanding the broad strategies Microsoft are pursuing. In this session, we take a look at what's happening in the world of Windows User Interface (UI) and User Assistance (UA) design as we move toward a Windows Longhorn future. At Microsoft, "User Experience" now has a prominent voice in UI design, and the User, not the System, is once again at centre stage. As a result, we are seeing new UI design guidelines emerge, as well as better designed software. The boundaries between UI and UA are blurring. Although Longhorn is realistically more than a year away, what trends are emerging and what can we leverage today?

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Writing in XML with Microsoft Word (T6A)

Tony Self, HyperWrite

For a few years now we have been hearing of the imminent arrival of XML, and how it will change the way we write documents. For many of us, the impact of XML has been minimal to date, but its future impact is becoming more obvious. XML languages such as DITA, DocBook and MAML are gaining support, as are the structured authoring techniques required to create such documents. But where are the authoring tools? In this session, we will discover that Microsoft Word 2003 is a fully-fledged XML editor, and that we can use it today to write documents in XML format.

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Where Are We Going? (W1)

Tony Self, HyperWrite

Where is the documentation business going? Although the prediction of paperless offices has yet to be fulfilled, other predictions have become true. The Web is now ubiquitous; hypertext is all pervasive; "always connected" is believable; and information is being delivered to our phones. We are now being told that XML will change our lives. And that we will be writing documents using "structured authoring" rather than narrative or "style-based" techniques. It also seems that the need for Help is diminishing, and the budget for documentation is shrinking. Where does that leave technical writers and content developers today? Are we morphing into a different profession? Will we become user advocates, or usability analysts, or XML architects? In this session, we look at the challenges ahead, and the opportunities and pitfalls awaiting us.

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In Forme of Speche is Chaunge (F6)

Dr Kate Burridge, Monash University

Copious without order, and energetick without rules [...] perplexity to be disentangled, and confusion to be regulated - this is how Samuel Johnson described the English language in the preface to his dictionary of 1755. Despite the attempts to regulate and standardise English since, all aspects of the system - sounds, words, grammar - are constantly on the move. Most of the changes result from a complex network of different influences. One of the most important of these is repetition or ritualisation and in this session we will explore the different ways change is shaped by the frequency with which we use words and phrases. We will focus on the way in which language evolves. Often changes introduce complexity and anomaly elsewhere. Competing changes can interfere. Other changes simply peter out. They might even reverse themselves. Frequently they leave behind relic forms; these become the eccentricities of the language. Modern English is full of rubble, and hidden in all this debris it is possible to uncover a partial history of the language.

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Best Practices for Embedded User Assistance (T5A)

Scott DeLoach, User First

This session focuses on best-in-class examples of Web-based embedded user assistance (UA). We will discuss the different display options that can be used to provide field-level, procedural, and conceptual information. We will also explore best practices for embedded UA, including how to integrate embedded UA with an external help system. You will learn why embedded UA is effective, how to select an embedded UA approach, which information types are best suited to embedded UA, and how to integrate embedded UA with an external help system.

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Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Put to the Test (F4)

Matthew Ellison, Matthew Ellison Consulting

The concept of seven plus or minus two is well known within the field of technical communication. Many of us use it as a limit for the number of options we present on a menu, the number of items we include in a bullet list, and the number of steps we build into a procedure. But what is the origin of this magical number, and to what extent does it usefully apply to the design of onscreen user assistance? This session summarises the research and the reasoning process that led to George Millers 1956 article "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information", and examines whether or not it is reasonable to use Miller's conclusions as a guide for our work as technical communicators. It then presents the results of a series of recent tests that investigate the maximum number of items that users can process effectively and efficiently in a range of different contexts within onscreen user assistance. The session discusses the extent to which these results support the use of seven plus or minus two as a useful guide, and suggests some other magical numbers that we should consider when designing user assistance.

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Rollovers, Beethoven! (F5)

Dave Gash, HyperTrain Dot Com

Ah, pity the lowly rollover: Frequently maligned, generally abused, usually miscoded - and used in virtually every Web site and Help system on Earth! Admittedly, even a clumsy rollover is preferable to an ugly form button, but why settle for clumsy when you can have elegant? There are many right and wrong techniques, and this session takes you on a tour through several of both, each with its own unique style. You'll see rollovers that are preloaded and non-preloaded, text-based and graphics-based, JavaScript-driven and CSS-driven, single-image and multiple-image, linked and non-linked, two-state and three-state, and more. It's enough to make Beethoven...well, you know!

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See Also

Jump to site index page Lotech Solutions' Tips, Tricks, and Procedures |  Jump across to a separate website on the internet www.hyperwrite.com  | Jump across to a separate website on the internet www.aodc.com.au | Jump across to a separate website on the internet PowerPoint presentation of this report  

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