Modern Help Systems

In case you haven't been keeping up with the latest trends in Help systems, this section outlines the style of Help recommended by Designing for the User Experience. Modern Help systems should have the following characteristics:

  • Help topics are generally short and task-oriented. Large Help subjects are divided into smaller tasks to make them easier to read.
  • Help windows are small so that the user can look at the program while he is reading the Help.
  • Help hyperlinks connect only to useful, relevant information. There is no obligation to link to another topic simply because you can.
  • Screen windows and dialog boxes are not described with Help topic windows but with mouse-driven context-sensitive Help using the What's This? command.

This is in sharp contrast to the old-style Help, now referred to as reference Help. Reference Help was typically displayed as a near-full screen window, and it included so much information that the user really had to be motivated to want to read it. Large Help topics are intimidating and tend not to be read. Also, obviously, it took up too much screen space for the user to be able to read the Help and view the program at the same time. Often the Help text contained a screen shot of the program window that the user was already looking at, which makes no sense at all. Modern taskoriented Help systems are much more helpful to the user and much less oppressive.

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Task-oriented Help corresponds much more closely than other forms of help to how and when users need help while using a program. For example, a user might want to know how to copy an image to the clipboard but is unlikely to ask, "How does the Copy command in the Edit menu work?"

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TIP
Prefer task-oriented Help.



Developing User Interfaces for Microsoft Windows
Developing User Interfaces for Microsoft Windows
ISBN: 0735605866
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 334

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