Re: Screenshots in help

[karderio <karderio gmail com>]

Hi :o)

On Sat, 2006-07-22 at 19:32 +0100, Joachim Noreiko wrote:
> --- Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com> wrote:
> 
> > Hi Joachim
> > 
> > While browsing mail.gnome.org archives I came across
> > this message of  
> > yours from March 27, which never arrived in my Inbox
> > for some reason:
> > >
> > > --- Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> Subject 10 also suffered severely from Free
> > Software help writers'  
> > >> continuing weakness for including full-size
> > screenshots in their help  
> > >> -- FFS, stop doing that!)
> > >
> > > Just so I've got this right -- you want FEWER or
> > NO full size  
> > > screenshots in the docs? How about practically no
> > screenshots at all,  
> > > of any size? That would be fine by me, as they're
> > a pain to make,
> > > maintain, and translate.
> > > ...
> > 
> > Before the BetterDesktop studies, other studies had
> > also found that  
> > people confuse screenshots with the actual
> > interface.  
> > <http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:Ab7nx7LLa3EJ: 
> > www.infomanagementcenter.com/enewsletter/200411/ 
> >
> secondary.htm+%22even+fairly+sophisticated+users+were+clicking+the+graph
> > 
> > ic%22>
> > 
> > More about avoiding screenshots:  
> > <http://g2meyer.com/usablehelp/singles/263.html>
> > 
> > When screenshots really are necessary, I suggest:
> > *   crop them to only the relevant control or window
> > area
> > *   reduce them to 75% or so (as mentioned in the
> > thread)
> > *   make them fade out on each side, so they look
> > even less like a real
> >      window
> > *   make them short looping animations (about 1
> > fps), when appropriate
> >      for illustrating a process.
> 
> I *knew* I'd read about scaling them down somewhere! 
> I was asking about this on IRC the other day and
> nobody else had heard of it.
> 
> I'm away right now -- could someone copy the salient
> points and links of the above to a new bug, so we
> don't forget -- file against either the Doc Handbook
> or the Style Guide, I forget which one talks about
> screenshots.

I've commented on this in the bug report [1]. To resume I think that
scaling screenshots makes them look bad.

Perhaps yelp could dress screenshots so as to help distinguish them from
windows. Perhaps a simple border could suffice, maybe integrating the
title. I think it would be interesting to look into this.

> > An even better approach would be to add to yelp and
> > GTK the ability to  
> > walk you through the real interface without
> > screenshots. For example,  
> > in a "How do I send customized letters?" help page
> > for Abiword,  
> > clicking a "Guide Me" button might highlight the
> > "Tools" menu, then  
> > highlight the "Mail Merge…" item in the menu once
> > you opened it, then  
> > wait for you to choose a file before describing the
> > next step, and so  
> > on.
> 
> That's probably for even beyond Mallard...

I think that with dogtail, this could actually not be too hard. At least
not as hard as Mallard ;)

Love, Karderio


[1] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=348495