Janet Swisher

Janet Swisher

Janet is a technical writer in Austin, Texas.

Open Source Docs don’t have to suck

Open Source Docs don’t have to suck.
OSCon presentation by Addison Berry, documentation lead for Drupal. Favorite quote:
“Documentation is like sex. When it’s good, it’s very, very good, and when it’s bad, it’s better than nothing.”

Themes Boutique for WordPress

Dmitry Fadeyev of the Usability Post blog has launched a store for WordPress themes: Introducing the Themes Boutique « Usability Post.

Planet | Writing Open Source

Planet | Writing Open Source.
Aggretator for blogs related to open source documentation.

Social Media Strategy Framework For Bands, Refined « Hit Singularity

Social Media Strategy Framework For Bands.
This is for musical groups. What is it for your business?

UAX User Assistance Experience: New column and lessons from the Dobro

UAX User Assistance Experience: New column and lessons from the Dobro.
a common learning pattern [is]:

This is easy.
This is hard.
This is easy.

So how does user assistance help move a user from the naive “this is easy” to the expert “this is easy”?

How to Listen to the User and Hear the Experience « Usability Post

How to Listen to the User and Hear the Experience « Usability Post.
This seems to be the week for advice on listening.

Two tweets from Kathy Sierra

kathy_sierra_tweets-7b1e03a82275fa594bdea3d32a1b6083.png – (37signals).
Client advic from @bertbates: “your white paper should feel like a treat, not a chore” SO many things should/could go from chore to trea
Keep hearing “nobody reads the manual” … people would RTFM if the FM was a treat, not a chore (& treated user’s time as HIGHLY valued)

Riding Rails: Rails Documentation Projects

Riding Rails: Rails Documentation Projects
Ruby on Rails strategy for developer documentation:

Inline code comments
Rails Guides, written by individual community members, compensated with a bounty
Rails Book
Rails Wiki

Notice that 2 of these are community-generated, and the inline code comments can be updated by the community via patches.

Don’t Mind Your Language…

The New Adventures of Mr Stephen Fry.

KC on Exchange and Outlook : How to get someone to answer your questions

KC on Exchange and Outlook : How to get someone to answer your questions.

Contributing to Rails: Step-by-Step « A Fresh Cup

Contributing to Rails: Step-by-Step « A Fresh Cup.
Nicely written procedure by and for programmers.

Language Log » Mixed cardboard only: a subtle case of nerdview

Language Log » Mixed cardboard only: a subtle case of nerdview.
Nice word for the technical expert’s perspective: nerdview.

Language Log » Trademark Insanity

Language Log » Trademark Insanity.
I’m beginning to think that non-arbitrary trademarks (those that are real words or phrases, as opposed to artificial creations such as “Google” and “Viagra”), should be abolished lest greedy corporations enclose too much of our linguistic commons.
This would also inhibit lazy corporations who simply can’t be bothered to come up with [...]

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