This week Ellis Pratt of Cherryleaf shared many insights and considerations for creating technical documentation for tablet computers that you may not have thought of before. This blog has a link to the full slide deck below and at the end of the blog, a link to a recording of the webinar itself.
Designing technical documentation for tablets
I wrote on this topic back in February, but expanded on the theme for a presentation to the San Francisco chapter of STC last week.
Although it may seem self-evident that a small screen requires shorter sentences, shorter word count, etc., some customers are trying to “squeeze” existing legacy content (created for full page display, replete with complex tables and multi-level nested lists) onto mobile devices.
This blog touches on highlights of Joe Gollner’s excellent co-Webinar with Adobe TCS on “Getting Real”, creating documentation for challenging environments where backlit screens and relatively short battery life for an iPad may not work well. There are a variety of areas, ranging from military to remote construction, where eReaders with opaque, grayscale screens can work better.
A couple of months back, STC’s new President, Alan Houser was on a closing panel of an event, and his answer to a frequent question has haunted me for weeks. The question? “What, if anything, would you have done differently in your tech comm careeer, knowing what you know today.” Read on to find out Houser’s answer. And I think I’ve finally found my answer.
This April I represented Adobe at an outstanding STC regional event, STC Spectrum 2012, in Rochester, NY. Despite an unseasonable snowstorm that covered all directional signage at the RIT campus, a capacity crowd showed up for an event that had a wide array of tract and themes. There was a sizable flock of hardy Canadians who are always nonplussed by anything that Mother Nature throws our way.
By the way, I was very impressed with the grasp everyone (veterans and newbees) had on many of the challenges that face us today. The days of spelling out D-I-T-A are definitely a thing of the past.
