So...shall all the "what's this?" buttons go away? What about "help" buttons? What about F1? What about technet? What about chm? What about a printable format? Do you need to be able to search? Full-words only? What about subtext? Do you need an index? Are examples and samples indexed too? How about intellisense and auto-linking? How often is the help updated? Which formats? Does it link to support documents? And what about best practice documents? And knowledge base articles and hot fixes? What's the life time of a piece of information?
For a company that generates as much "help" as MSFT - it's a big deal. Regards, Michael B. Smith Consultant and Exchange MVP http://TheEssentialExchange.com From: Andrew S. Baker [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 9:21 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Decide on the Future of Microsoft on-box Help The help has to be generated. All that is needed is another tool (or a more robust tool) to handle the format options. For that matter, there's no reason why it couldn't be a similar format for both online and offline. -ASB: http://XeeSM.com/AndrewBaker On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 9:13 AM, Michael B. Smith <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I think a lot of this turns out to be about the tools and the effort involved in generating "help" in different formats. We've had this discussion with the Exchange team several times now. (Where "we" means "Exchange MVPs".) Regards, Michael B. Smith Consultant and Exchange MVP http://TheEssentialExchange.com From: Andrew S. Baker [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 9:01 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Decide on the Future of Microsoft on-box Help Disks are large enough to keep it local, with supplemental help online. I need basic help to remain on the box in case there is no internet connectivity. -ASB: http://XeeSM.com/AndrewBaker On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 8:24 AM, Thomas W Shinder <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Hey guys, What do you think of on-box help? Does it make the application too heavy? Is it something you ever use? Is it just wasting disk space because you never use and nobody uses it either? Would the world be better off without on-box help, or would it be the end of the world if it were gone? I want to know! Take the survey located at the following link and have a hand in whether on-box help stays "in the box" or migrates somewhere else. It's only two questions and your answers will determine whether there is a .chm file included with Windows products in the future. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MJWPL5F Thanks! Tom ------------------------- Tom Shinder [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> MS ISD iX UAG Direct Access/Anywhere Access Team The "Edge Man" blog (DA all the time): http://blogs.technet.com/tomshinder/default.aspx Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/tshinder Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tshinder ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
