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Janet Swisher
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.
AODC day 1 – Feedback and Collaboration in Help « ffeathers — a technical writer’s blog
AODC day 1 – Feedback and Collaboration in Help « ffeathers — a technical writer’s blog.
Matthew Ellison gave a number of examples of simple feedback mechanisms in existing help systems, where the online system provides a way users can rate their experience of help. Typically, the help system asks if the information was useful, and [...]
McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Internet-Age Writing Syllabus and Course Overview
McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Internet-Age Writing Syllabus and Course Overview..
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.
InfoVis Keynote: Command Post of the Future – information aesthetics
InfoVis Keynote: Command Post of the Future – information aesthetics.
Interesting description of usability testing on a military system: “Jake noted that his users were extremely smart and resourceful, which ironically made testing tricky. Given simple tasks, users were too good at figuring out even hard-to-use software. To get around this, users were given extremely difficult [...]
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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