atw: Re: Terminology for wizards

 

        I agree with Kath. 

        In a previous job, the Tech Writer team followed much of the screen
terminology outlined in the Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical
Publications. This stated "Refer to an individual screen within a
wizard as a page." We found this worked fine for our readers.  

        The tricky bit was ensuring that each page had a unique heading or
title at the top of the page so that we could refer to it by name. The
window titlebar had the name of the wizard only. This is not always
the case with COTS wizards. However, given that we worked for a
software house that built their own wizards, it was easy to get the
developers to follow a convention of applying a unique name for each
page. 

        Hence, "Click Next to see the Select Printer page." 

        Note that the name of the page is not bold, but the button label is.
 

        Hope this helps. 

        Cheers
 Jennifer

 On Thu 09/07/09 3:16 PM , "Collins Family" eandkcollins@xxxxxxxxxxx
sent:

        How about ‘page’? 

        Regards 

        Kath 

-------------------------

        FROM: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] ON BEHALF OF Howard
Silcock
 SENT: Thursday, 9 July 2009 3:00 PM
 TO: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
 SUBJECT: atw: Terminology for wizards 

        This post isn't directed at Harry Potter's mates. It's about
documenting a Windows procedure that uses what Microsoft calls a
'wizard', in which you are taken through a series of displays, at each
of which you enter information, then click a Next button to go to the
next one. I'm reviewing some documentation in which the successive
displays are referred to as 'screens'. I may be picky, but I really
don't like to use 'screen' except to refer to the piece of hardware in
your monitor. I don't think 'window' sounds quite right, though, in
this case - and nor does 'dialog box'. Has anyone else had to document
this kind of stuff?  

        Howard

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