User Manuals

[agmorgan]

Do you have a style template for creating user manuals?
What do you use for small projects?
HTML help workshop -> .chm?
Basic HTML?
Word processor?

What do you tend to put in them?
Screenshots?
How much depth should you go into?

Any links to examples of good user manuals that I could copy the style of?

[Valleysboy1978]

Yes we have a style template that is controlled from our marketing division
We always use Microsoft Word for any documentation

[Hack]

My company has a department of just technical writers that do all of the documentation. They use RoboHelp.

They include screenshots as well as written documentation. The depth of your manual would depend on the product and how difficult it is to use.

It would also depend on your products target audience.

[szlamany]

I've had professionals do doc for us - it was pretty, nicely formatted - bound and in paper.

No one ever uses it!

For our VB forms that are used to produce reports and on-line info displays, we have incorporated on-screen help - half the form is dedicated to help text. Help text comes right from tables in the DB - general help for each report or query and then specific help for each question that is asked. We display is in a picture box - and store silly tags like and (for BOLD, for example) in the table so we can make it pretty when displayed.

Then we recently decided to use a product called "ScreenCorder 4" by MatchWare. It records screen movements and can even have audio so that a user can "watch" a snippet on how to add a record, or call up a person. This has just started so we have yet to work out exactly how to index this help and make it appropriate to the form the user is on, but that's a minor hurdle.

[RhinoBull]

...Then we recently decided to use a product called "ScreenCorder 4" by MatchWare. It records screen movements and can even have audio so that a user can "watch" a snippet on how to add a record...
We are going to start using the TurboDemo (http://www.turbodemo.com/eng/index.htm) to build tutorials and quick help - nobody wants to read paper anymore.

[szlamany]

TurboDemo looks pretty similar to ScreenCorder - mouse-clicks show up as big-red asterisk - text balloons...

Have you tried it yet?

All we have done with ScreenCorder so far is made a couple of "trade show" demos. We play them on 17" lcd's at the trade shows we go to and people love to stop and watch them!

http://www.matchware.com/en/products/screencorder/default.htm

[RhinoBull]

Yea, we did few quick demos for our execs and they couldn't get enough... :)

[rory]

MSWord and Adobe PDF ///
example ... http://www.bahamassecurity.com/geo/livevue_geo_user_manual_1103.pdf

[agmorgan]

Thats a nice manual rory.
How did you create that splash screen on page 5 by the way?

[rory]

thanks ... just a generic splash screen i use ...
if you want the splash form let me know and ill post it here ...

[RobDog888]

I use RoboHelp for static help documentation. For video recording or streaming online demostrations I use the very good and free Windows Media Encoder 9.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/encoder/default.mspx

[agmorgan]

Always like free stuff! Thanks Rob :thumb:

rory: If you could post the splash form, that would be great

[rory]

Ok here is just the splash form ...

[rory]

and the same form in an example app.