Principles of Online Help Design

Description

A practical course intended to teach technical authors the basics of online help design. Includes a practical demonstration and a hands-on online help project, using RoboHelp.

Prerequisites

None

Length

2 X 60 minute sessions

Topics covered

Principles of effective online help design
Differences between hard copy and online formats
Presentation and navigation within online help systems
Integrating online systems into an application
Help formats

Tools used

RoboHelp

Course materials

PowerPoint presentation
Online help samples
Course notes

Practical

Participants have the opportunity to create and present their own online help projects. The following topics are covered during the practical section:

Creating a project
Defining primary and secondary windows
Defining topics
Defining non-scrolling regions
Adding hyperlinks
Creating pop-up windows and graphic hotspots
Adding See Also sections
Defining browse sequences
Creating an Index
Compiling and testing a help project

Advanced topics

Context-sensitive help
Creating topic Ids and mapping Ids