Tutorials

[wenwilder]

When people set up online tutorials why don't they supply a step by step for people who have never used the program?

Yes it may seem like holding their hand and it may be time consuming. (I know, I've done it and I'm doing it again!) But it is much easier then answering a hundred emails with the same question: "What do I click on after I download the file?" Or "I've opened it, ran it, and closed it. What do I do now." Okay, that one is a little overboard, but it does get to be frustrating.

You have a website, you want to teach people how to properly use a program or perform a process. They do NOT know what they are doing - add pictures, make it step-by-step and make it multiple pages if you have too. Anything worth doing is worth doing right. And heck, if you do it well enough, it will get passed on to others ;)

[mikmik]

wen wrote

...add pictures, make it step-by-step...

BRAVO!!!!

It is amazing how a few screen shots can clarify what is being said. I don't know how many times I have given up on an app or lesson because of ONE step that didn't make sense.

On some, I have played aroung and 'discovered' what was meant, and then I see what they were saying (LOL, obviously - but not at first!). I used to blame myself, some people just assume we understand what they mean. But, it is like getting your site reviewed.
What seems obvious to yourself often doesn't make sense to others, like site navigation.

Macromedia tutorials drive me mental - as an example of 'assuming I understand their lingo'. I never use them any more, just surf to find third party tutes.

[Jerry]

Originally Posted by mikmik

wen wrote

BRAVO!!!!

It is amazing how a few screen shots can clarify what is being said. I don't know how many times I have given up on an app or lesson because of ONE step that didn't make sense.

On some, I have played aroung and 'discovered' what was meant, and then I see what they were saying (LOL, obviously - but not at first!). I used to blame myself, some people just assume we understand what they mean. But, it is like getting your site reviewed.
What seems obvious to yourself often doesn't make sense to others, like site navigation.

Macromedia tutorials drive me mental - as an example of 'assuming I understand their lingo'. I never use them any more, just surf to find third party tutes.

Must be the geek in me, but I've found that Macromedia's tutorials are far better than others, such as Adobe's, which I generally find cryptic at best.

I cannot agree more that step-by-step instructions and screen shots are absolutely necessary for inexperienced users. I personally have put together more than 20 instructional booklets for users when working as the head of a technical support department. Those booklets cut our support calls by over 30%, a result that was well worth the hours put in in creating them.

[mikmik]

You could be right about the Macromedia tutes, I haven't tried them for a while, and I was totally inexperienced with any software when I first started.
As for adobe, yes! The photoshop tutes I found were very hard to follow and understand. Not there is one program that has excellent third party tutorials all over the net LOL.

Do you ever make 'chm' books? How about 'pdf'?

I have found a few good programs that are freeware that basically compile html files (like chm) but also provide directory building capabilities. More like structure, based on responses to questions, ie yes or no responses.

Anyways, jerry, thanks for pointing out Macromedia to me again.
I am just getting into this, and instruction making (LOL) is very daunting. I like it, though.

[Jerry]

Originally Posted by mikmik

You could be right about the Macromedia tutes, I haven't tried them for a while, and I was totally inexperienced with any software when I first started.

The getting started tutorials for fireworks MX actually had me up and running very quickly with it, though I still prefer photoshop for most image production.

Originally Posted by mikmik

As for adobe, yes! The photoshop tutes I found were very hard to follow and understand. Not there is one program that has excellent third party tutorials all over the net LOL.

Absolutely, there are some wonderful sites for adobe tutorials. one of my favorites is http://www.phong.com.

Originally Posted by mikmik

Do you ever make 'chm' books? How about 'pdf'?

I've done quite a lot with pdf. I use it to send quotes to my clients, and have used it extensively in the past for many things.

I'm just looking into chm, as I now do a LOT of desktop programming. So give me a few weeks and I should know enough to be dangerous LOL

Originally Posted by mikmik

I have found a few good programs that are freeware that basically compile html files (like chm) but also provide directory building capabilities. More like structure, based on responses to questions, ie yes or no responses.

I wouldn't mind seeing some of those titles, especially if they're free.

Cheers

[mikmik]

Hi, jerry.

There are some nice apps here: http://jansfreeware.com/

HelpTree
25-December-1998 password:1207pm size:253kb
With HelpTree you can create problem solving Helptrees. Ideal for help desks, material selection, structured decision taking. Search in tree, modify color and background, record decision taking steps, labels to jump to any node in the tree. Combo's for quick selection of : labels, helptree files and history records. The integral editor can also function as a notepad replacement for large files.

Tips 3
23-December-1998 size:486kb
With Tips you can create tipfiles with tips. Tips can be anything: from programming tips to birthdays to recipies. Quick select tipfile and tip. Search in tips. Modify color and background. Just one place to store everything that can come handy.


SbookBuilder 10
28-September-2002 size: 799kb
SbookBuilder creates a standalone HTML viewer executable of a directory and all the html, image and sound files in it, with just a few button clicks. Frames support, zoomable print preview and printing of selected pages, custom start page, custom Icon and windows title, optional password protection, special print page-break tag; Cascading Style Sheet support. Optionally disable printing. Optionally include a custom sequence file in your Sbook so that users can flip the pages in the specified order. Ideal for Ebooks and pages without links; free text search with hit-highlighting. NEW: improved HTML and CSS support; demo-book; bug-fixes.

All the ones I've tried (in the past, long story but I'm just getting going again) worked fine on XP ntfs, so should be no probs on any version.

Take note of any passwords that are listed, you need them if they are listed to instal.
Also, check these, I used painter 23, and it is wild.

Diagrams 1.1
1-August-2004 size:968kb
Diagrams is a program to draw diagrams. FEATURES: sticky shape connectors (single and multiple segment) ; custom shape data; printing with preview; predefined shapes for: Flow, UML, digital and process diagrams; user-defined shapes with visual shape designer; scripted html reports on custom shape data. NEW: gradient fills, curved connector, polygon shape, arc, arrow shapes; diagram explorer.


Painter 25
10-July-2004 size:1.21Mb
Painter 25 Features: TOOLS for Backdrops, Effects, and Filters, Banners, Artistic, GIF and JPEG Optimizer, smallBMP's; GADGETS: free floating buttons, labels, images, gradient text, smart shapes, bitmap fonts; IMAGE: layers, seamless patterns, trace, emboss, mirror, flip, free rotation, whirl, scroll, drip, crop, wave, shadow, filter, mask, glue and combine ; FORMATS: png, jpg, (transparent) gif,bmp,wmf,emf,ico,tif; TWAIN scanner support;PRINT: with preview; DRAW: clone brush, stars,polygons, mirrors, blocks,syms, spirals, arcs, curves, cubes, chords, pies, spirograph, maze, globe, concentric,anchored etc.; PATTERNS: create your own; TEXT: plain, shadow, pattern, rotate; RANGE: float, color transitions, tiling,borders,move, smear etc; CAPTURE screen/area. BRUSHES: airbrush, textures, clone, smart color, ornamental, effect, morphing; create 256-color Icons; image blending; PNG transparency tool for variable and shape based transparency; Basic SVG rendering; NEW: Painter script.


Movies 13
25-June-2004 size:1135kb
Movies 13 is a GIF-Animator with 98 animation wizards including text and actor wizards. Edit existing animations, create new from imported images or from images created with integrated Movies Draw. Features: GIF explorer, GIF optimizer, quick backgrounds, smart shape (100 shapes with 25 gradient fills, rotated text etc.), animate selected frames; 3 free floating actors for creating cartoons; actor and text wizards;actor paths; AVI to GIF and GIF to AVI converters. NEW: Movies script.

I am also looking at MS Technet for the chm stuff!

If I remember any more 'help builders', I will post them.
One more...Do you use Dreamweaver? There is a course builder extension that looks very interesting.

[Jerry]

I do use dreamweaver, but do most of my sites in asp or asp.net, so I almost always use a database to manage content on my sites, which makes writing help desk systems pretty simple to do.

I also happen to have a copy of robo demo floating around somewhere, though I haven't used it much ;)