WebWorks Releases Another Must-Read Whitepaper Entitled “Beyond Technical Communication”
January 19th, 2012 by cpowellToday WebWorks released a new addition to its whitepaper library. Beyond Technical Communication is an inside, analytical look into the contributions a Technical Writer can make to maximize the customer experience while at the same time minimize associative costs. Click Here to read the latest WebWorks whitepaper.
Whitepaper Series Completed: Let us know what you think!
October 5th, 2011 by cpowellWebWorks has completed their 3 part whitepaper series titled “The Evolution of Online Help.” Since its release, this whitepaper series received great feedback from the technical writing community.
We’ve prepared a short two-question survey based on your technical writing role. We’ll release the results once we have everyone’s responses.
We want to hear from you!
Comment on this blog post and let us know what you thought about this whitepaper series. Do you agree or disagree? What do you think the future holds for technical writers?
WebWorks version 2011.2
July 15th, 2011 by cpowellThe WebWorks team is hard at work developing ePublisher version 2011.2. Stay tuned to www.webworks.com for more information about this exiting release and its new features.
WebWorks Tips and Tricks: Transform Static Content into Engaging Web Pages
July 1st, 2011 by cpowellClick the links below to view WebWorks’ Latest Tips and Tricks. Learn how to fully utilize WebWorks Reverb and its Disqus integration to turn your online help or published content into an engaging and interactive web page that will make your end users swoon.
STEP 1: Add WebWorks Reverb to your ePublisher Pro Project >>
STEP 2: Enable Disqus in your Format Settings >>
The Reverb Effect
May 15th, 2011 by allumsI’ve worked at WebWorks for nearly 14 years. In that time, content delivery costs and methods have changed significantly. WebWorks Publisher enabled technical writers to escape the joys of hand coded WinHelp files. Browsers opened up the web and enabled sophisticated HTML help run-times. Google made it possible to find your heart’s desire in the world wide world. Today, the Social Web lets you find what you need with the help of people you trust.
So all you have to do is put your content on the web…
Right?
Well…
Perhaps there are a couple of more things to consider. Lessons learned and validated by what we experienced here at WebWorks: The Reverb Effect.
Intermittent Issues
May 3rd, 2011 by laurenThese are always a challenge. What can make things occur at one time and not the other, and more importantly yet more confusingly why? There does not seem to be an online guide that can instruct someone on any product how to go about troubleshooting for an issue that happens sporadically. My guess is that these happen mostly at the software level. (Don’t worry: Engineering and Development. We still like you). So, in my role, the process of investigation begins. In researching this subject, I realize that in the world of Software Support, that in addition to taking a mechanic’s role, we often take a bit of an investigative role. I don’t usually have a specific order of questions, but one could say it is a 4W (minus the “Who”, because it is obviously happening to you) approach. So, let’s begin with “Where”. The accompanying question to where would be to be able to isolate it to where it occurs, and does this occur on just one or more systems.
Next we follow up with “When”. Inspecting the log becomes essential at this point. On the log screen you will see various stages of output generation. Let’s say that you run across issues during the Image pipeline. If your inconsistent errors are consistently happening at the Image pipeline, most likely there is something going on with the graphic generation, which leads into the “What” question. So, in our example we determined that it happens at the graphic pipeline. So, what aspect of the graphics are we trying to isolate? Is it an issue with the Rasterizer? These are things that can be tested by using by-reference images in your input. Once you determine what is the cause of the graphic culprit, you can begin to ask the final question, “Why?”. These can be as simple as needing to close a dialog box, however if you cannot figure out why it occurs, then chances are you will not be able to resolve this. Sometimes, you might get lucky and the issue goes away, but we want a better success rate than chance.
Ultimately, the goal in Support is being able to reproduce and isolate issues. Given system specific issues, isolating is an absolute must. How can we fix something that we know nothing about? If you have submitted a case, and it seems like we are asking many questions, there is a reason for it, and the reason is that we are trying to help you as quickly as possible. Also, feel to share any troubleshooting insights that you have.
Installation Frustrations
April 13th, 2011 by laurenThese can happen any time, whether it is the dreaded “Object reference not set to an instance of an object” or your project encountered a problem and needs to close. They aren’t the greatest and can cause hours of issues. The first thing that Support personnel usually think of to resolve an issue is to reinstall the software. This, unfortunately rarely works for Mac or Windows programs. I find myself getting into the trap of even trying cleaning the registry which seems to be in the same camp of doesn’t do much. I find that taking a scalpel to the unneeded junk in your system is the best way to get rid of the error. It sounds scarey, but what you are getting rid of is temporary files will do the trick. Recently, I was having difficulty opening any project due to this error:
Somewhere between the Riveter and the Bear
April 5th, 2011 by laurenI have no problems with being compared to sort of a mechanic. I fix things, and if I can’t fix things, chances are they are broken at the Engineering level, so I have to go back to the people who create the parts. Despite usually being outside the Scope of Support, I like to break the rules, and sometimes break the product, and have some fun with XSL projects/customizations. Ideally, my job would be represented by this image:
Related Links (DITA)
March 25th, 2011 by jwilesI just put up a wiki page with an example of adding titles to related-links > linkpools (that’s mouthful, and a strange one at that:)) in DITA. This solution exposes the little known, and perhaps less used, markopen attribute in default.wwconfig. Read the rest of this entry »
Happy Snowman Donut Award
February 1st, 2011 by allumsePublisher 2010.3 shipped on January 13th, 2011. Those of us in Development gave a big sigh of relief. And our favorite Sales manager, Christopher Ward, presented me with the coveted “Happy Snowman Donut” Award.