RE: [inframe] Single-sourcing = myth? (and other topics)

["Richard Combs" <richard.combs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Glenn Maxey wrote: 

<snip> 
> Chunking of the material is important. However, even a linear 
> manual chunks the material into books, chapters, sections, 
> etc. A problem with online help systems in the past has been 
> that they over-chunked the material. They chunked the 
> material into such small pieces, they they lost context and 
> became next to useless even in context-sensitive help, which 
> was made even worse when writing of the topics was secondary 
> to the mechanics of mapping application contents IDs to 
> topics. "The Fritz button turns Fritz on and off." Duh! I can 
> see that from the interface! What does Fritz do and why should I care?
> 
> User Interface Engineering [www.uie.com] studies have proven 
> that users are not adverse to scrolling as previously 
> thought, hence we don't have to overchunk our material 
> (bite-size or pop-up hell) if it doesn't call for it. 
<snip> 

Wow, talk about synchronicity! Just before reading Glenn's post, I sent him and my other Voyant TechPubs compatriots a thought-provoking link from a related post on Techwr-L. 

Michael Hoffman has a site chock-full of convention-challenging ideas about presenting information on line: http://www.hypertextnavigation.com/

WARNING: If you're fond of the word "chunking," you'll flee this site, trembling with disbelief. 

I've barely scratched the surface, but was particularly intrigued by the topic "Inline Hypertext Links: Too Many Links Makes for Cognitive Turbulence and Churning":  

http://www.hypertextnavigation.com/infoaxcs.htm#_Toc405388789 

Hey, Glenn! Almost time for lunch! Mmm, BBQ! ;-)

Richard


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Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Voyant Technologies, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT voyanttechDOTcom
303-223-5111
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rgcombs AT freeDASHmarketDOTnet
303-777-0436
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