Review of Screen Capture Tools

Check out the Review of Screen Capture Tools. Neat.

[Via Usable Help]

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Microsoft goes the RSS way

The Microsoft Help and Support site is now providing an RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication) for its Knowledge Base (KB) articles. [Link]

Well, well, well. MS is only syndicating its KB articles, but I am thinking a step ahead: deliver a user manual (also) through RSS. Most organizations are moving (or have moved already) to XML based authoring, and generating RSS feeds from there should be a walk in the park.

Aside: What would happen if online manuals had a 'Comments' feature like in our blogs? Chew on it.

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To Click or Select...

Your styleguide says it is 'select'. The whole world says 'click'. You are confused. So am I. I have tried being informal while writing instructions: "Hit the Submit button to complete regiustration." But they spanked me for being so casual and changed 'hit' to 'select'. You know, no one reads manuals. Now I know why.

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Need inputs: Talk on usability

Hi folks, I have been invited to talk about usability to a bunch of people that are training to be technical communicators. The duration of the session is two hours. I don't want it to be a 'words only' session. Of course, I would be talking to them about the basics, the importance of usability, standards, product design and usability, and user-centered design. What I am thinking about is some kind of an exercise, a practical session, for the participants. I was thinking if I should ask them to run a quick UI review on their mobile phones (and take it from there... UI standards for mobiles, gloss vs. Utility etc.).
If you have any comments suggestions, please leave a comment.

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Prepend

Came across this term Prepend. Prepend is a word commonly used as the antonym of append, which means add at the end. Prepend is not a valid English term. But I don't think it will stay that way for long.

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GUI Glossary

Checkbox or check box? How many times have you been caught in that awful knot? Here is a little help:

GUI Glossary: definitions of frequently used GUI terms.

Enjoy!

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Enhancing Internal Communications with Blogs, Wikis, and More

Insightful presentations by Nick Finck, Mary Hodder, and Biz Stone. If you are in anyway related to Intranets you may want to check these out:

Enhancing Internal Communications with Blogs, Wikis, and More



The Why and How of Blogging

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