Online Help Systems

Design and Implementation

Inbunden, Engelska, 1988

379 kr

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This text summarizes the existing knowledge/experience about the design and implementation of help systems. It should help readers to understand design alternatives for help systems, make tradeoff decisions about possible features, be aware of implementation problems and strategies, and become familiar with the development cycle.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum1988-05-01
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor200
FörlagIntellect
ISBN9780893914721

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Preface ix 1 Introduction 1Why help systems are needed 2What is a help system 3Conceptual models of help 4Design alternatives 6Research issues 7Implementation considerations 8Relationship between helps, training, and documentation 9Who this book is for 10What the rest of the book covers 11 2 Design Alternatives 13Static vs dynamic helps 14Multiple levels of help 17Accessing help systems 18User versus system-initiated helps 19Screen formatting 20Extensibility 23Other considerations 24Summary 26 3 Examples of Help Systems 27Helps for a command language (CROSSTALK) 28Data Entry Fields (VM SCHEDULE) 29Multiple-level helps (WORDSTAR) 30Multiple help options (MCI MAIL) 31Context-sensitive helps (LOTUS) 33Prompting helps (SHERPA) 35Helps in a programming environment (SYMBOLICS) 37Guiding a database search (MELVYL) 40Hypertext (GUIDE) 41Summary 43 4 Research on Helps 45Experimental results 46Cognitive psychology 49Artificial intelligence 56Summary 59 5 Implementation 61Analysing user requirements 63Specifications 64Prototyping 65Coding/writing 65Tryouts 66Quality control 67Releases 68Maintenance 69Cost/benefit tradeoffs 69Summary 72 6 Guidelines 73Make the help system easy to access and easy to return from 76Make helps as specific as possible 76Collect data to determine what helps are needed 78Give users as much control of the help system as possible 79Different types of users need different helps 80Help messages must be accurate and complete 80Don't use helps to compensate for poor interface design 82Summary 83 7 Summary and Conclusion 85For DP/MIS managers 86For software designers/developers 87For training/documentation specialists 89For researchers 90For the rest of us 91 Glossary 93 References 97 Appendix A: Programming Considerations 101 Appendix B: Software Tools 107 Author Index 111 Subject Index 113