Re: Recommended books on tech writing

Subject: Re: Recommended books on tech writing
From: Isaac Rabinovitch <isaacr -at- mailsnare -dot- net>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 11:39:16 -0800




John Fleming wrote:

Many years ago, I attended a computer course and the instructor put
things this way. The advantage of the mouse is that it has a
comparatively short learning curve. It takes longer to learn the
keystrokes. Once you know the keystrokes, though, speed leaves the
mouse users in the dust.


I absolutely agree. But to be really effective, keyboard controls have to be completely and consistently implemented by all applications. And it just doesn't happen.

Here's my pet example. Microsoft's implementation standards mandate that there be two "Search Again" hot keys: F3 and Control-G. The F3 one is actually older than Windows (I think it comes from an old IBM terminal standard), and I've used it so long that some basic part of my brain always expects it to work. But of the four apps I use most these days (Internet Explorer, Netscape, Word, FrameMaker), not one implements it by default. Netscape is hardwired to use only Control-G. Framemaker uses the non-standard Control-Shift-F, though you can change this by hacking the config files. Word doesn't implement either F3 or Control-G by default -- both were need by other elements of Word's bloated feature set. (You can assign a hot key yourself, but "Search Again" isn't a builtin, so you have to know how to code VBA macros.) And Internet Explorer simply doesn't implement "Search Again"; instead it makes the Find dialog non-modal, so it acts like a Macintosh-style floating window, a convention I've never been able to deal with.

I seem to have become a UI standards nazi. Sign of old age?


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