filed in Technical Writing on Nov.15, 2007
I’m not usually one to toot my own horn, but when one of my help projects is directly cited as a positive in a product review, I can’t pass up the opportunity.
In WS_FTP Server Hones in on the Enterprise, Aaron Weiss wrote (emphasis added):
Pros: Intuitive Web administration; Flexible event-based rules; Well-written online help.
Since tech writers everywhere play the role of unsung hero, I’ll take that, proudly.
filed in Technical Writing on Sep.07, 2007
From deep within Big Blue comes CoScripter is an interesting Firefox plugin that can be used to automatically generate textual procedures for tasks that are completed on the Web (such as requesting paying a credit card bill or tracking a UPS package). The plugin records the steps required to complete a process as human-readable text, which can then be played back by any other person using the plugin.
This poses two significant benefits for technical communication:
Very impressive, and I am anxious to see how this technology will be used by the technical communicators.
filed in AuthorIT on Aug.02, 2007
SmartTop is a script I put together to address a need of a user on the AuthorIT users list. Debi wanted to place at the bottom of each page in her xHTML help a link that would scroll the frame back to the top of the page. She did not, however, want the link to appear if the entire contents of the frame were visible, as it is redundant and useless then.
SmartTop fixes that by only displaying the top anchor link when the content of the page exceeds the viewport of the frame.
To use SmartTop:
<script>
function SmartTop()
{
//reset to visible in case of resize
document.getElementById(’SmartTop’).style.visibility = ‘visible’;
document.getElementById(’SmartTop’).style.display = ‘block’; //check for presence of scroll bars
if(document.body.scrollHeight <= document.documentElement.clientHeight)
{
//if present, hide top link
document.getElementById(’SmartTop’).style.visibility = ‘hidden’;
document.getElementById(’SmartTop’).style.display = ‘none’;
}
}
</script>
That’s it. Follow those steps, and books you publish using this template should show a link to the top of the page only if a vertical scrollbar exists.
If you like and/or use this, please let me know! I’d love to hear that you’re using this in your projects.
filed in Technical Writing on Jul.11, 2007
I’ve been branching out into more and more marketing writing lately, specifically in the form of white papers.
Michael Stelzner’s book Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged has been an invaluable resource to me. I purchased it in ebook form, and the printouts are already thorougly dog-earred and beginning to tatter around the edges. When I need it now, I have to use some expert amateur detective tactics to discern which coworker has “borrowed” it.
Thankfully, if I mention the upcoming seminar Michael’s hosting San Diego, I can get a second copy. Or maybe I’ll take the white paper industry report instead…
So if you’re in the San Diego area, or if you have more training budget than I do, check out Michael Stelzner’s Creating and Marketing Winning White Papers Seminar on September 21.
filed in Ideas on Apr.10, 2007
I’ve become quite the fan of Greasemonkey scripts to add functionality to the sites I frequent, but I grow weary of having to keep the scripts up-to-date on each computer I frequent–four in all (two desktops at home, one desktop at work, and my laptop).
It would be great if someone would produce a proxy server I could set up that would inject the code into each page as it was served via the proxy. A server-side Greasemonkey, if you will.
filed in Personal on Mar.22, 2007
You may have noticed that I’ve made changes to shift this blog from personal to professional. If you fall on the personal side of that divide, you probably don’t care much about AuthorIT or information architecture or interaction design (ok, cousin Matt might…).
That’s why I’ve launched a new blog where I’m sharing things I think are cool. I won’t promise I’ll post original thoughts often (at least not until I’m safely on the other side of our upcoming move), but I will post sometimes. So if you’re here for something more personal, update your bookmarks and RSS feeds.
filed in Technical Writing on Feb.06, 2007
I’m blogging from my googletalk account right now.
filed in Technical Writing on Nov.16, 2006
I recently sat on a panel of professionals with English and communications degrees at one of Augusta State University’s Career Spotlight forums. The panel was comprised of a magazine editor, a newspaper reporter turned layout designer, a corporate trainer, and me representing technical writing.
The students who attended our session were most interested in what they could do now so that they would be marketable when they graduated. Since we weren’t focused exclusively on technical writing, the answers we gave were fairly general, but valuable for tech comm students nonetheless:
I was honored to be asked to sit on the panel, and I hope I sparked an interest in technical writing in some of the students.
What advice would you give students considering technical writing as a career?
filed in AuthorIT, Productivity, Technical Writing on Nov.07, 2006
Since we adopted AuthorIT as our HAT a few months back, everyone has been impressed with how it has changed our department’s workflow. The only real holdouts have been the installs developers, who think that anything that isn’t stored in Microsoft Visual SourceSafe is completely devoid of value.
So, to keep from having to deal with VSS any more (heck–ditching VSS was one of the greatest points in the AuthorIT sales pitch for us), I wrote a batch file to handle publishing and checking in the output to VSS.
The batch file takes parameters on the command line for all of the publishing and VSS information, so it can be scheduled through Windows Scheduler to automate the entire publish and check-in process.
The batch file, including its help information, is included after the jump.
filed in Photography on Nov.05, 2006
The other night, the lovely Mrs. Sansbury and I modified the lens cover of our Canon Digital Rebel XT to convert the camera into a pinhole camera.
The process was pretty simple–I just drilled a hole in the exact center of the lens cover. I used a small bit, but in retrospect, I could have drilled any size hole, as I had to cover the hole I drilled with opaque tape and poke a smaller hole in order to get anything resembling an in-focus photo.
Here’s a sample of the shots we took, from my flickr account.
That’s the Mrs. holding a candle. As you can tell, framing the shot is a bit of a challenge when your viewfinder is solid black.
