chapter5

Chapter Five Response
We both found something to relate to in this chapter. For Dan, he had actually read Chapter 5 online before beginning this class, because he’d been searching for information on modular documentation and organizing information. He initially needed help because he was struggling to break out of the traditional, linear terms of thinking that a writer uses when creating a paper manual or a PDF. This chapter, therefore, has already ended up helping him a great deal with creating WebHelp for his employer. He says that reading this chapter has been important in pushing him to grasp a modular concept of writing.

Using these concepts, he has since broken down a user manual into a collection of topics, which can be viewed by the end user in segments – rather than having them scroll through the pages of a PDF. Again using the concepts in Chapter 5, Dan has designed the WebHelp documentation so that the users can click through a clearly-labeled navigation bar on the side of the screen and find their topic. They can also find their topic on one or two pages depending upon what task they need to accomplish. The user, therefore, can navigate the content by type of information or task, which Dan makes easier to accomplish using layering (as discussed in Chapter 6). Dan originally considered including a PDF option for customers who might want to print out information, but (as he says), “I’ve come to realize they’re only going to want certain information. Not the whole manual.

Caitlin doesn’t have as much experience as Dan, but she also found a lot to relate to in this chapter. At the beginning of last summer she started a technical writing internship, which is her first experience with applied technical communication. She does most of her work using a program called Arbortext, which is basically an XML writer. What she finds interesting about this chapter is that it’s now pretty clear that Arbortext was designed using concepts similar to what Redish is writing about. The user doesn’t create a new “document” – they create a new “topic,” “task,” or even a “concept.” Using this software more or less forces the user to think in the kind of modular mode that Dan had originally struggled with. Caitlin hasn’t actually done any online work yet, but has continued to work with PDFs. However, she is working on manuals with the knowledge that at one point it will need to be placed in the software’s online web help. Because the PDFs were created with Arbortext, the transition should be fairly smooth. Still, after reading Chapter 5 she realizes that she’ll have to (as Redish writes) “Cut! Cut! Cut! And cut again!”

Caitlin also wanted to note that when she comes across sites that arranged by user, she always gets inexplicably flustered. For example, her undergraduate school arranges content by asking, “Who are you?” on the homepage. Even though she *knows* how to find the information she needs under the “Current Students” tab, she always takes the time to hunt for it through the “Alums” pathway. She says, “I feel like I'm lying or something and they'll figure me out if I misrepresent myself. It's really stupid -- but I always do it.”

My Response:

I think this chapter, as this group illustrates, is very important for those transitioning from other forms of writing to writing for the web. I know I was surprised myself, when I first starting working with the web, how what seems like a little bit of text can seem like a lot on a web site. I had to learn to trim excess over and over again till it was good. I had to make sure just the information needed was there, no more or no less, to make a decent website.

I have never had to work with the PDF program, but I have had to deal with sites that insist on giving it to you, when it really wasn’t necessary. Whenever I see the link for PDF I usually ignore it unless I really have to look in it. For the most part the information I seek could be put into a much simpler, and web friendly context. To answer one quick question I do not want to wade through a huge, unwieldy document. I just want a sentence or two to let me know what it is I need to learn, or understand.

I also like how the program that Caitlin uses does not mislead it’s users by using the term document. It instead point them in the right direction for web writing with terms that express the shortness, and promptness necessary for successful web sites. This is completely different from using something like Microsoft Word, because the original purpose for that program was not writing for an audience on the internet.