Re: documentation usability

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

On Tue, Jun 26, 2001 at 09:39:41PM -0600, John Fleck wrote:
> (My personal favorite - "You need to create modules short enough to
> reduce scrolling or page-turning to an absolute minimum. Your ultimate
> aim is to eliminate scrolling or page turning completely for each
> individual module of information." He's absolutely right, and this
> suggests some docs I need to work on....)

Which sort of proves that one person's usability is another person's pet
peeve. :-)

Documentation files that are forever requiring me to hit the "next" link
because they only contain ten lines or less of text are something I find
very annoying. It's easy to hit <Space> to scroll down a page in the
documentation, but it takes longer to either find the mouse and hit the
next link or (in something like lynx) move with the keyboard to the
right link.

However, for the same reason, I dislike excessive page turning -- it
interrupts the flow (I'm a fast reader, so a book with lots of
screenshots or large type will rarely be bought by me because it's just
unpleasant to read). So I guess my argument would be that scrolling !=
page turning, but I can also live with the fact that Pat and others'
experiences have shown that to be not true for everybody.

(Just commenting to fill the silence, really -- this is probably an
information-free piece of email.)

Malcolm

-- 
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.