Tech Writer Today Magazine - TechWhirl
Technical writing and technical communications news, articles and resources for technical writers and technical communicators.
eBooks are a hot topic for technical writers and user assistance professionals right now, and WritersUA 2012 featured three sessions about eBooks and electronic publishing: EPUB: Putting It All Together, by Scott Prentice; eBook Production Workflows, by Joshua Tallent; and The Current State of Foreign Language Text in eBooks, also by Joshua Tallent Read more of this technical writing article »
Where do you go to find answers? Google? Yeah, so does everyone else (including your users). Paul Mueller of UserAid knows this fact and stressed the need for a one-stop-shop approach for help content in his talk at WritersUA. “Users only want to go to one place to find answers,” said Mueller. A common approach to having your help content be “Google-able” is to take the help files and throw them up on the web so that users can find them through a Google search. But why should the user have to figure out where to find the info they need and sort through it all? Decide what your customers need and deliver it in one integrated solution Read more of this technical writing article »
Joe Ganci of Dazzletech knows the importance of capturing a user’s attention, especially when writing help that affects a user’s safety. Joe holds a degree in Computer Science and is a published author, having written several books, research papers and many articles about eLearning. He is widely considered a guru for his expertise in eLearning development and teaches classes and seminars at commercial companies, government facilities, leading universities and at many industry conferences, where he has often served as keynote speaker. At his WritersUA session on enhancing eLearning and Help with Captivate, Joe showed us some great effects in Adobe Captivate that can be used to hook the user and transmit information more effectively. Read more of this technical writing article »
As e-books become another option for publishing technical content, writers are faced with more choices among the tools to produce them. In my previous articles on e-book readers and formats, I noted the similarities between e-book formats and the online help formats that technical writers have been using for many years. In this article, I’ll look at some of the tools you can use to create EPUB books, the most common e-book format. I’ll also show how you can convert an EPUB to Amazon’s Kindle format. Read more of this technical writing article »
Most technical writers understand online help formats and have worked with at least one over the years. Help file format have evolved from man pages (manual pages in UNIX in the early 1970’s) and HLP files through CHM files and the plethora of HTML-based formats that we have now. E-Book formats are similar in many respects to the common online help formats, but with one crucial difference; they’re designed to work on the small screens of today’s e-readers and tablets. Read more of this technical writing article »
The publishing world is experiencing the same momentous change that hit the record industry a few years ago – the switch from physical to digital media. One thing I can say with confidence: technical writers are in a good position to take advantage of this revolution in publishing technology. E-book formats are very similar to online help formats, and the tools and techniques that we’ve learned over the years in producing online help and web-based documentation are easily adapted to working with e-books. Read more of this technical writing article »
Just when you thought you had the publishing thing all figured out, someone goes and changes everything on you. HTML5 is one such change. But don’t get me wrong, it’s a very good thing. Just ask Peter Lubbers of Kaazing. His session on HTML5 proves how very much of a good thing this change is for technical communications. Read more of this technical writing article »
Corey Ganser presented a thoughtful session about the importance of engaging technical writers and customer support agents with the goal of decreasing support costs and increasing client satisfaction. Three stakeholders in the question of who cares about content are the company, the customers, and you (the technical communicator). During his session, he explained how his employer, Mindtouch, forged relationships with its customers and found opportunities for selling its products and services Read more of this technical writing article »
There’s no denying that smart devices are taking over. Everywhere we turn, people are talking about the newest app they’ve downloaded (Angry Birds anyone?). But aside from avian masochism and borderline obsessive updates on Facebook, smart phones and other mobile devices (tablets, PDAs, etc.) have proven their usefulness in the professional world, and in particular, for workers in the field. But what does the age of mobility mean for technical communications professionals focused on user assistance? How do you plan and implement help on smart devices that field personnel can and will use? Read more of this technical writing article »