Writing User Documentation

Course outline

Copyright HCi, 1998

Week 8: HTML tutorial

HTML editor intro

The following materials provide a very good introduction to HTML, which will be supplemented by the tutorial.

http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut/

http://home.netscape.com/communicator/v4.5/index.html

Assignment 2

Details of the assignment are in a handout that you'll be given in class.

Plagiarism

I will make a point of taking randomly-selected sections of text from each submission and feeding them into a web search engine. In this way, I will quickly be able to find the web site that you copied from, should you have been desperate enough to do so. I also have access to all the same books you do. My suggestion: definitely use both the web and the library as sources of information, but rewrite/restructure the material to suit your audiences and all will be well.

The above warning does not apply to images: you can copy and include any images you like, both from the web and from books, etc. However, I would like to point out that it would be polite to get the copyright owners' permission for this: polite, but not absolutely necessary, as your assignments will not become commercial products and are intended only for teaching purposes.

Delivery

Submit your documentation plan on paper, marked with your name.

Submit your assignment on a single floppy disk with your name written on the label; if it won't fit onto a single disk, you should probably leave out some of the images. You can zip the files to make them fit (see me if you don't know how to do this).

I suggest that you either develop your assignment:

• on your computer at home, if you have one
• on the lab's computers

If you do work at the lab, I strongly suggest that you use the following scheme:

• have three floppy disks and mark them "working", "backup a" and "backup b"
• use the "working" floppy to hold the copy of your assignment that you're actually working on
• for the first session, take the "working" disk and "backup a" with you to the lab
• at the end of the session, copy your "working" disk onto your "backup a" disk
• next time, take your "working" disk and your "backup b" disk, leaving your "backup a" disk at home in a safe place
• at the end of the second session, copy the "working" disk onto your "backup b" disk
• alternate your two backup disks, leaving the other one at home when you go to the lab

This way, you will be protected against:

• your "working" disk becoming faulty: you will lose at most part of one session's work, as you will have a copy on your latest "backup" disk
• losing both your "working" and "backup" disk in the pub on the way home: you will lose at most one session's work as you will have your other "backup" disk at home
• accidentally copying your "backup" disk onto your "working" disk instead of the other way round: you will lose at most one session's work, as you will still have the other "backup" disk at home

NOTE: You will not be protected against spilling coffee over all three disks when you have them at home, so keep the two backup disks in separate rooms.

You will also not be protected against your house/flat being burgled/burned down/flooded but hey, you can't protect against everything.

If you keep your assignment on floppy I will expect you to use this backup scheme (or an even more complicated one of your own devising), and so I will not accept any excuses such as "I lost all my files because the lab computer crashed".

If you are lucky enough to have a computer at home and use it to develop your assignment, I will expect you to do backups at the end of each session, onto floppy (not onto another part of the same hard disk!)

One thing you won't have to worry about is viruses: you can't get them in HTML files (yet).

Late assignments will lose 20% of the assignment mark for each day they are late. If you are 5 days late, there's no point in delivering at all. If you have a really good excuse for not being able to deliver (prison, Nobel prize, unexpected childbirth), let me know as soon as possible and we'll talk about it.

Marking

I will be allocating marks for:

• compliance of your plan with AS4258 (15%)
• meeting the usability needs of the audiences (25%)
• innovation (10%)

(total: 50% of course mark)