atw: Re: Screenshots in user doco - Yes or No?

Yes, but I prefer to use them only when each screen can justify its
existence. When you plunk in an image of every screen it's tempting to
follow each one with a catalogue of all its fields and options. This is
usually a bad practice that leads to feature-oriented rather than
task-oriented documentation.

One danger sign is when a screen shot is a plain snapshot of an entire
window. Good screen shots are often annotated (numbered callouts or labels)
or altered (cropping, zooming or highlighting is used to show the area of
interest).

Good uses for screen shots include:
- identifying parts of the window that will be referred to later (this is
the action bar; this is the status area; this is the refresh indicator;
these are the View buttons)
- showing 'before and after' (Figure 9 shows the data before the EXCLUDE
command; Figure 10 shows the same data after the EXCLUDE command)
- showing the effect of a configuration change or new mode (admin view
versus operator view; draw mode versus paint mode)
- showing a sequence of events in a complex screen that isn't really laid
out in the most logical order (1. Select a shelf 2. Filter the list of
books 3. Select a book 4. Select the format ...)
- confirming that the reader has completed some steps successfully to this
point and is ready to move to the next step
- showing differences between operating systems or window managers

You might be able to put your manager's mind at rest by saying that a few
good, annotated establishing screen shots will greatly simplify the
instructions in the rest of the book. It means there's less temptation to
over-explain things in the middle of a procedure ("If the sensor indicator
in the status area at the bottom-left corner of the screen is grey, click
the Refresh icon in the action bar to ...").

Stuart

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