Table of contents for Fluid user manual

[Paul Zablosky]

Excellent idea Allison.  A good time to think about this again would be 
after the refinements to the site which Jonathan is planning (and to 
which I hope to contribute). 

Paul

Allison Bloodworth wrote:
> Nice suggestions Paul! I second your thoughts on doing some user 
> testing. I'm hoping to do something similar for the Open Source Design 
> Pattern Library, and I think looking at how Fluid release users 
> implement components, solve design problems, and use our user manual 
> would give us some great insights on how to design all our reference 
> materials. Perhaps that is something we can plan to do sometime after 
> the Sakai Conference in Paris? Or if anyone plans to actually work on 
> component implementation *in* Paris, we could even connect with them 
> there.
>
> Allison
>
> On Jun 2, 2008, at 4:37 PM, Paul Zablosky wrote:
>
>> This whole exercise of creating a virtual user manual has raised all 
>> sorts of interesting questions.  I'm delighted to see th d as the ToC 
>> evolves. Is it a release manual (our original objective), or a manual 
>> for people using any of the resources of the Fluid project (something 
>> it may be morphing into)?
>>
>> I'm inclined to let it develop a bit, but keep discussion going on 
>> important issues, such as how we keep release-specific content 
>> distinguished from release-independent stuff -- the issue Anastasia 
>> addressed.  We'll need a few guidelines to keep things under 
>> control.  I offer the following for discussion:
>>
>>    1. Content that is associated with the Fluid software releases
>>       should be readily identifiable  and easily found by the release
>>       consumers.  Right now we have it as the first sections of the
>>       ToC.  We should keep it this way until we come up with a more
>>       logical setup.
>>    2. Annotations should give the user an idea of what's on the page
>>       without clicking on it. We should always keep that in mind when
>>       composing or editing them.
>>    3. Section annotations should the material in the section is going
>>       to be generally of interest to them.
>>    4. The ToC should not have any child pages.  Pages with
>>       manual-only content should be attached to a central "Manual"
>>       parent page, if they have no other logical home.
>>    5. The ToC has now grown to about 2 1/2 scrollable screens in
>>       size.  At some point it may become unwieldy.  I have been
>>       toying with the idea of have cloakable sections but I'm not
>>       sure this is a good idea.  It would mean the user having to
>>       click rather than scroll.
>>
>> What this whole scheme needs is some user testing.  Is it doing its 
>> job of making the Fluid reference material more accessible to 
>> consumers of the Fluid deliverables?  How can we find out? We may not 
>> be ready for that yet -- we may want to do a few more rounds of 
>> refinement first -- but it's something to keep in mind.
>>
>> Paul
>>
>> Colin Clark wrote:
>>
>>     I think the main impetus for adding this section was that we
>>     wanted to share out the results of the Content Management
>>     Research as a way of reporting on the state of UX in the Fluid
>>     communities (which I believe is one of the Fluid deliverables).
>>     After adding this, I realized that the results of the UX
>>     Walkthroughs are also something that we should probably share.
>>     I'm not entirely sure the OSDPL working group belongs there, but
>>     I added it at the last moment to publicize that effort and maybe
>>     it should be deleted. I guess the question is, who is the
>>     audience of the manual and would they find this information
>>     helpful (or conversely does the manual become overwhelming for
>>     most of our audience when it is included)?
>>
>>
>>
>> The audience question--will they find this particular information 
>> helpful or overwhelming?--is exactly the right question, and one 
>> which I'm un br>
>> The nice thing about not freezing our documentation in PDF format is 
>> that we can take some time to work out this question and change the 
>> table of contents whenever we decide. :)
>>
>> Colin
>>
>> ---
>> Colin Clark
>> Technical Lead, Fluid Project
>> Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto
>> http://fluidproject.org
>>
>
>
> Allison Bloodworth
> Senior User Interaction Designer
> Educational Technology Services
> University of California, Berkeley
> (415) 377-8243
> abloodworth at berkeley.edu <mailto:abloodworth at berkeley.edu>
>
>
>
>

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