This week’s update on technical communications and the TechWhirl community is supported by Platinum sponsor Adobe & RoboHelp 9 | http://adobe.ly/Ay5bVC
Whew, TechWhirl has just about finished up a pretty hectic week, with great new content on translation topics, summaries of sessions at WritersUA, and all kinds of technical communications news. We’re thrilled that we got to interview Tom Aldous and talk tech comm and Adobe. And we’re grateful to Dorothee Racette president of the American Translators Association for her overview of Ten Steps to Successful Translation Projects. Keith Soltys provided some really practical tips on managing FrameMaker and ePublisher when doing translation, and Ashley Brown, Lauren Hart and Julie Grady have been giving us the insiders’ view on user assistance as presented at WritersUA.
Before you head out for whatever weekend warrior activities you have planned, take a minute and go vote in our weekly poll on methods to demonstrate the value of technical communications. And please post your comments or contribute to the email discussion to add your thoughts on a topic of major importance to all of us in the technical communications field.
And whatever you do, have a great weekend.
-the gang at TechWhirl
In Case You Missed it: This Week @ TechWhirl
New features and articles on TechWhirl.com:
- Session Summary: Usability Testing–Down, Dirty, and Doable!, by Julie Grady
- Technical Communications Poll: Demonstrating the Value of Technical Communications
- Technical Writer Tips and Tricks: PDF and Online Help Documentation Translation, by Keith Soltys
- WritersUA Session Summary: Using Adobe Captivate to Enhance Your eLearning and Help Files, by Ashley Brown
- Ten Steps to Make Your Technical Translation Project a Success, by Dorothee Racette, guest contributor
- Why You Should Have Attended User Assistance 101 at WritersUA, by Julie Grady
- Evangelizing, Myth-busting and the Future of FrameMaker, by Roger Renteria and Connie Giordano
- Day-by-Day at WritersUA: Thoughts from a Newbie Technical Writer, by Lauren Hart | http://bit.ly/ytfzjf
Tech Comm News:
- Tech Writer This Week: March 22, 2012
- Technical Communities and MadCap Software Sign Government Services Partnership
- TandemSeven Launches Persona Modeler® Software Toolset
- Acrolinx Appoints Markus Juhr-DeBenedetti as CEO
- Astoria Software Opens Enterprise XML Content Management To Mac OS X
- Cambridge Semantics Announces Compliance Information Management Solution
Technical Communications: What You’re Talking About
A quick shout out to our Technical Writers and their discussions in our email discussion group:
- Megan Bruce wants opinions on “Uninstalling vs Removing” in software documentation. As a result, we have a lively discussion on what happens in each of the major OSs, the difference between a command and an action, and any post-operation cleanup that might need to be done. And don’t forget the eternal battle between Microsoft Manual of Style, Read Me First and the Apple Publications Style Guide-cage match anyone?
- Nancy Allison’s question on “Kindle? Other Hardware? How to Choose?” brought out some great real-life experiences from Whirlers on what kind of device to use for reading, including backlighting and impact on eyestrain, color definition, multi-use, and battery life. Worth reading also for the ideas on what you can do test drive different devices prior to purchase.
- Charlotte Claussen is looking to upgrade the toolset and wants a“HAT to replace Forehelp 5 – working with Passolo and Visual Studio.” Whirlers provided some practical feedback and recommendations on a number of tools, and raised some interesting questions on workflows that include contributions and reviews from developers and other SMEs.
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SPONSOR-Luv
We want to send a very special “thank you” to our sponsors for their support.
Platinum: Adobe Systems Incorporated
Gold: ComponentOne Software, Madcap Software
Silver: Society for Technical Communication (STC), Vancouver Island University
