what’s up,edoc?!
TRANSCRIPT
What’s Up,
EDoc?!
Who Am I?
Neil Perlin - Hyper/Word Services.
– Internationally recognized content consultant.
– Help clients create effective, efficient, flexible
content in anything from hard-copy to mobile.
– STC’s lead W3C rep – ’02 – ‘05.
– Certified – Flare, Mimic, RoboHelp, Viziapps
Studio.
Some Specific
Predictions –
On the Broad
Side
Mobile
From here…
To here…
Mobile
If the definition is always changing, what is
“mobile”?
Effectively “the un-desktop”.
How to create content for all these things?
– HTML5, responsive design, other technologies
and methodologies.
HTML5
HTML 5 – More power than HTML 4.01,
less rigid than XML.
– Strategic effect – better enables web crawlers.
– Mobile driver – basis for “hybrid” mobile apps.
– Supports responsive design.
Responsive Design
Device-agnosticism, or…
“…use of media queries, fluid grids, and
scalable images to create sites that
display… well… at multiple resolutions.”
– Implementing Responsive Design, Tim Kadlec
New Riders, 2013
Emerging support in popular HATs.
– Examples from RoboHelp 11 and Flare 10…
Responsive Design
Note the design changes as the display size
shrinks – RoboHelp.
Responsive Design
And again here – Flare.
Content Strategy
Can’t just wing it in this environment,
Calls for a “content strategy.”
Which is what?
– Depends on your company, might involve doc
cost-justification, strategic role for doc team,
standards, content creation, tools, training, etc.
Plus two new writing approaches – topic-
based authoring and structured authoring.
Topic-Based Authoring
Authoring content in chunks – “topics” –
rather than documents or books.
– A topic is as focused and self-contained as
possible a discussion about one subject.
Not new.
– Dates back to ‘91 with first HATs.
– Actually dates back to ‘65 and InfoMapping.
Structured Authoring
Authoring with structure.
– Just means content has structure – no precon-
ceptions about what it is or how it’s applied.
So what is “structure”?
– Standard and consistent sectional, syntactical,
and stylistic rules.
– What technical communicators have always
created, albeit usually manually…
What Do I Get Out of This?
Pros:
– Flexibility – Granular content easier to target.
– Multi-author capable projects.
– Content re-use.
– Single author = writing consistency, ownership.
– CMS integratability – Self-explanatory.
Cons:
– New way of authoring – lack of continuity.
– Excess granularity can = too many topics.
Analytics
Need some way to track usage, rather than
just releasing our material into the void.
We’ve had analytics for years but seldom
used it.
– 3rd party – Google Analytics.
– Vendor-specific – RoboHelp Plus, MadCap
Pulse.
See April issue of Intercom for more.
The Cloud
Short definition of “the cloud”
» http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.f
ree-power-point-templates.com%2Farticles%2Fbest-cloud-computing-
powerpoint-templates
The Cloud
What to expect:
– Output to the cloud – changes distribution.
» ViziApps Flare project.
» Snapguide (www.snapguide.com).
– Cloud-based tools – access on any device with
a browser and internet connection – unhooks us
from the office.
» Google Drive, Office 365, ViziApps Studio.
Social Media
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+,
Pinterest(!)… – like it or not, use them.
If you don’t:
– You’ll miss emerging uses in areas like tech
support and customer support.
– You can’t stop it – try and it’ll happen anyway
and you’ll be left behind…
– …and get a reputation for being out of touch.
Some Specific
Predictions –
On the Focused
Side
DOCTYPE Declaration
In Flare.
– Adds a DOCTYPE statement to topic files to
render in “strict” or “standards” mode.
– No DOCTYPE – topics render in “quirks”
mode.
DOCTYPE Declaration
Strategic decision…
– “Strict” tells browser to use new, strict rules for
displaying HTML files.
– “Quirks” tells browser to use older, loose rules.
– How to decide?
» Do your topics use display features like floats that
don’t display correctly in normal mode? Use strict
mode – e.g. enable DOCTYPE.
» Not having these problems? Use quirks mode – e.g.
ignore DOCTYPE – maybe...
DOCTYPE Declaration
What’s the effect?
– “Quirks” lets modern browsers violate current
syntax rules to run older HTML files correctly
but may cause trouble going forward.
– “Strict” enforces modern syntax rules.
» Which may break the display of older HTML files.
– Effects vary depending on browser, version.
– Talk to your programmers.
– See http://hsivonen.iki.fi/doctype/.
Relative Units of Measure
We’re used to point-based sizes – 72pt = 1”
– from print – familiar and simple.
Problems With Points
Points being fixed, are fine in print but have
two problems in online outputs:
– Can’t be resized by a browser user.
» Selecting View > Text Size in IE has no
effect.
– Can’t be resized automatically by a browser.
Relative Size Units
– % – Based on default size of normal on a given
browser – 100%.
» H1 of 150% is 50% larger than normal for
any browser.
– em – Based on currently-used font size.
» If body is set to 16px, then 1.5 em = 24px.
– rem (root em) – Based on font size for html{}
tag. Not yet widely supported, esp. in HATs.
– ex – Poorly supported – don’t use.
Why Relative Sizes?
Image at absolute width
in a too-narrow space.
– Note horizontal scroll bar.
At relative width in same space.
– No horizontal scroll bar; 50%
width makes browser show
the image at 50% of available
space – e.g. “relative”.
– Each browser handles the
formatting for you.
Float
A CSS property that controls the positioning
of other elements in an HTML page.
Replaces (or eventually will replace) use of
tables as layout design elements.
Augmented Reality
Keeps “real” reality and adds info to it.
– Most commonly by augmenting a smartphone
screen showing what’s in front of you.
» Versus the new reality of “virtual reality”.
– The augment can be related to what’s displayed
or just overlaid.
– For example…
Augmented Reality Examples
Fun but silly example, with the AR unrelated to
the display – Wikitude’s Swat the Fly.
Starbuck’s Cup Magic from
Valentine’s Day, 2012.
Augmented Reality Examples
Using the accelerometers
to determine phone’s
orientation and direction
and NASA terrain data to
determine and label the
skyline from any point
in any direction – Phil
Endecott’s Panoramascope:
Augmented Reality.
Wearables
Eliminate the annoyance of having to haul
your iPhone out of your pocket.
Sounds silly, but consider convenience and
new possibilities.
Wearables
Google Glass is the best
known example.
But there’s also:
– Other glasses.
– NFC ring.
– Samsung Galaxy
Gear watch.
And On the Far Out End…
“Internet of things” – linked sensors and
actuators in physical objects.
Dynamically reconfigurable output.
– See Author-it DAP (Dynamic Assistance
Platform).
Dynamically modeled OLH – Metadata-
wrapped, self-assembling content chunks.
Some Overall
Trends
Technical
Move from…
– Proprietary to open code formats, like RTF to
XHTML, HTML5.
– Proprietary, local to open, web outputs, like
HTML Help to WebHelp, HTML5.
– PC to web, multi-access environments, like the
cloud.
– Documents to repurposable content chunks.
– Simple to complex technical ecosystems, like
CSS3 and media queries.
Management of Content
We should see:
– Need for more rigorous topic-based content
created using templates, CSS, etc.
– Less text.
– Need for strategic and cost-justification.
– Need for standards to
future-proof our material
to avoid this.
How to Deal
With All This
Some Crucial Questions
Which technologies will take off?
Which will your company use? You?
Who knows?
– Remember Blackbird, the CueCat, server push,
mCommerce?
So what do we do?
Be independent – act on our own rather than
waiting for your company to act for you.
What To Do
Stay current technically.
Stay current on general business and trends.
– To understand events – profitability vs. market
share and re-birth of RoboHelp, Apple vs.
Adobe re Flash, Adobe’s HTML5 conundrum.
– Business issues can kill a technology.
Stay current on your company’s business.
– Show tech comm’s support of corp. strategy.
What To Do
Develop, promulgate, and enforce standards
to “future-proof” your work.
– Such as relative sizes in CSSs.
Develop and maintain metrics.
– For cost-justification a CFO will accept.
Get trained on your tools and technologies.
– A course does the flailing for you.
What To Do
Review your tools re environmental change.
– Like FrameMaker in an age of “topics”.
Accept rise of “content”, social media.
Don’t denigrate tools in favor of writing.
– Tools enable content delivery, without which
content is pointless.
Embrace and help shape change…
Hyper/Word Services Offers…
Training • Consulting • Development
Flare • Flare CSS • Flare Single Sourcing
RoboHelp • RoboHelp CSS • RoboHelp
HTML5
ViziApps
Single sourcing • Structured authoring
Thank you... Questions?
978-657-5464
www.hyperword.com
Twitter: NeilEric