What’s Up,

EDoc?!

Who Am I?

Neil Perlin - Hyper/Word Services.

– Internationally recognized content consultant.

– Help clients create effective, efficient, flexible

content in anything from hard-copy to mobile.

– STC’s lead W3C rep – ’02 – ‘05.

– Certified – Flare, Mimic, RoboHelp, Viziapps

Studio.

Some Specific

Predictions –

On the Broad

Side

Mobile

From here…

To here…

Mobile

If the definition is always changing, what is

“mobile”?

Effectively “the un-desktop”.

How to create content for all these things?

– HTML5, responsive design, other technologies

and methodologies.

HTML5

HTML 5 – More power than HTML 4.01,

less rigid than XML.

– Strategic effect – better enables web crawlers.

– Mobile driver – basis for “hybrid” mobile apps.

– Supports responsive design.

Responsive Design

Device-agnosticism, or…

“…use of media queries, fluid grids, and

scalable images to create sites that

display… well… at multiple resolutions.”

– Implementing Responsive Design, Tim Kadlec

New Riders, 2013

Emerging support in popular HATs.

– Examples from RoboHelp 11 and Flare 10…

Responsive Design

Note the design changes as the display size

shrinks – RoboHelp.

Responsive Design

And again here – Flare.

Content Strategy

Can’t just wing it in this environment,

Calls for a “content strategy.”

Which is what?

– Depends on your company, might involve doc

cost-justification, strategic role for doc team,

standards, content creation, tools, training, etc.

Plus two new writing approaches – topic-

based authoring and structured authoring.

Topic-Based Authoring

Authoring content in chunks – “topics” –

rather than documents or books.

– A topic is as focused and self-contained as

possible a discussion about one subject.

Not new.

– Dates back to ‘91 with first HATs.

– Actually dates back to ‘65 and InfoMapping.

Structured Authoring

Authoring with structure.

– Just means content has structure – no precon-

ceptions about what it is or how it’s applied.

So what is “structure”?

– Standard and consistent sectional, syntactical,

and stylistic rules.

– What technical communicators have always

created, albeit usually manually…

What Do I Get Out of This?

Pros:

– Flexibility – Granular content easier to target.

– Multi-author capable projects.

– Content re-use.

– Single author = writing consistency, ownership.

– CMS integratability – Self-explanatory.

Cons:

– New way of authoring – lack of continuity.

– Excess granularity can = too many topics.

Analytics

Need some way to track usage, rather than

just releasing our material into the void.

We’ve had analytics for years but seldom

used it.

– 3rd party – Google Analytics.

– Vendor-specific – RoboHelp Plus, MadCap

Pulse.

See April issue of Intercom for more.

The Cloud

Short definition of “the cloud”

» http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.f

ree-power-point-templates.com%2Farticles%2Fbest-cloud-computing-

powerpoint-templates

The Cloud

What to expect:

– Output to the cloud – changes distribution.

» ViziApps Flare project.

» Snapguide (www.snapguide.com).

– Cloud-based tools – access on any device with

a browser and internet connection – unhooks us

from the office.

» Google Drive, Office 365, ViziApps Studio.

Social Media

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+,

Pinterest(!)… – like it or not, use them.

If you don’t:

– You’ll miss emerging uses in areas like tech

support and customer support.

– You can’t stop it – try and it’ll happen anyway

and you’ll be left behind…

– …and get a reputation for being out of touch.

Some Specific

Predictions –

On the Focused

Side

DOCTYPE Declaration

In Flare.

– Adds a DOCTYPE statement to topic files to

render in “strict” or “standards” mode.

– No DOCTYPE – topics render in “quirks”

mode.

DOCTYPE Declaration

Strategic decision…

– “Strict” tells browser to use new, strict rules for

displaying HTML files.

– “Quirks” tells browser to use older, loose rules.

– How to decide?

» Do your topics use display features like floats that

don’t display correctly in normal mode? Use strict

mode – e.g. enable DOCTYPE.

» Not having these problems? Use quirks mode – e.g.

ignore DOCTYPE – maybe...

DOCTYPE Declaration

What’s the effect?

– “Quirks” lets modern browsers violate current

syntax rules to run older HTML files correctly

but may cause trouble going forward.

– “Strict” enforces modern syntax rules.

» Which may break the display of older HTML files.

– Effects vary depending on browser, version.

– Talk to your programmers.

– See http://hsivonen.iki.fi/doctype/.

Relative Units of Measure

We’re used to point-based sizes – 72pt = 1”

– from print – familiar and simple.

Problems With Points

Points being fixed, are fine in print but have

two problems in online outputs:

– Can’t be resized by a browser user.

» Selecting View > Text Size in IE has no

effect.

– Can’t be resized automatically by a browser.

Relative Size Units

– % – Based on default size of normal on a given

browser – 100%.

» H1 of 150% is 50% larger than normal for

any browser.

– em – Based on currently-used font size.

» If body is set to 16px, then 1.5 em = 24px.

– rem (root em) – Based on font size for html{}

tag. Not yet widely supported, esp. in HATs.

– ex – Poorly supported – don’t use.

Why Relative Sizes?

Image at absolute width

in a too-narrow space.

– Note horizontal scroll bar.

At relative width in same space.

– No horizontal scroll bar; 50%

width makes browser show

the image at 50% of available

space – e.g. “relative”.

– Each browser handles the

formatting for you.

Float

A CSS property that controls the positioning

of other elements in an HTML page.

Replaces (or eventually will replace) use of

tables as layout design elements.

Augmented Reality

Keeps “real” reality and adds info to it.

– Most commonly by augmenting a smartphone

screen showing what’s in front of you.

» Versus the new reality of “virtual reality”.

– The augment can be related to what’s displayed

or just overlaid.

– For example…

Augmented Reality Examples

Fun but silly example, with the AR unrelated to

the display – Wikitude’s Swat the Fly.

Starbuck’s Cup Magic from

Valentine’s Day, 2012.

Augmented Reality Examples

Using the accelerometers

to determine phone’s

orientation and direction

and NASA terrain data to

determine and label the

skyline from any point

in any direction – Phil

Endecott’s Panoramascope:

Augmented Reality.

Wearables

Eliminate the annoyance of having to haul

your iPhone out of your pocket.

Sounds silly, but consider convenience and

new possibilities.

Wearables

Google Glass is the best

known example.

But there’s also:

– Other glasses.

– NFC ring.

– Samsung Galaxy

Gear watch.

And On the Far Out End…

“Internet of things” – linked sensors and

actuators in physical objects.

Dynamically reconfigurable output.

– See Author-it DAP (Dynamic Assistance

Platform).

Dynamically modeled OLH – Metadata-

wrapped, self-assembling content chunks.

Some Overall

Trends

Technical

Move from…

– Proprietary to open code formats, like RTF to

XHTML, HTML5.

– Proprietary, local to open, web outputs, like

HTML Help to WebHelp, HTML5.

– PC to web, multi-access environments, like the

cloud.

– Documents to repurposable content chunks.

– Simple to complex technical ecosystems, like

CSS3 and media queries.

Management of Content

We should see:

– Need for more rigorous topic-based content

created using templates, CSS, etc.

– Less text.

– Need for strategic and cost-justification.

– Need for standards to

future-proof our material

to avoid this.

How to Deal

With All This

Some Crucial Questions

Which technologies will take off?

Which will your company use? You?

Who knows?

– Remember Blackbird, the CueCat, server push,

mCommerce?

So what do we do?

Be independent – act on our own rather than

waiting for your company to act for you.

What To Do

Stay current technically.

Stay current on general business and trends.

– To understand events – profitability vs. market

share and re-birth of RoboHelp, Apple vs.

Adobe re Flash, Adobe’s HTML5 conundrum.

– Business issues can kill a technology.

Stay current on your company’s business.

– Show tech comm’s support of corp. strategy.

What To Do

Develop, promulgate, and enforce standards

to “future-proof” your work.

– Such as relative sizes in CSSs.

Develop and maintain metrics.

– For cost-justification a CFO will accept.

Get trained on your tools and technologies.

– A course does the flailing for you.

What To Do

Review your tools re environmental change.

– Like FrameMaker in an age of “topics”.

Accept rise of “content”, social media.

Don’t denigrate tools in favor of writing.

– Tools enable content delivery, without which

content is pointless.

Embrace and help shape change…

Hyper/Word Services Offers…

Training • Consulting • Development

Flare • Flare CSS • Flare Single Sourcing

RoboHelp • RoboHelp CSS • RoboHelp

HTML5

ViziApps

Single sourcing • Structured authoring

Thank you... Questions?

978-657-5464

nperlin@nperlin.cnc.net

www.hyperword.com

Twitter: NeilEric