Book Description

The #1 guide to creating effective online documentation is now updated and expanded to reflect the latest technological advances, including multimedia. "...online documentation is a different medium, as different from books as television is from radio or movies from novels. This edition treats online documentation as the new electronic medium it is." -William Horton Written by an internationally renowned pioneer in the field of technical communication, this is an incomparable guide to the art and science of creating online documents and documentation systems. Rather than concentrating on any one particular program or operating system, William Horton cuts to the heart of effective human-computer interaction and extrapolates a set of universal principles that can be applied to any form of online documentation-from messages, menus, and help files, to computer tutorials and hypertexts. Maintaining an end-user's perspective throughout, he guides you step by step through every crucial design decision without ever losing sight of the final goal-clear, effective online documentation that people enjoy using. Proven techniques that help reduce support and training costs for software products, eliminate the need for paper documentation, make programs more appealing and easier to use, and more * A practical, hands-on approach, supported by the latest research and supplemented with dozens of case studies and illustrations * Includes new chapters on multimedia and computer-based training * Comprehensive coverage of all online documentation media-words, graphics, animation, and sound * Updated information on organizing and structuring documents-with examples from Windows, OS/2, and Macintosh interfaces