Chapter Summary

Technical communication can take both paper and electronic form. Paper publications have the advantage of being easily portable; however, they are more costly to reproduce and update than electronic publications. When creating electronic publications, it is important to consider the user's interaction with the material and include more white space than is usually found in a printed publication. Hypertext allows a user to navigate to other parts of an electronic file, link to the Internet, and access media.

When using computer programs, users can access help through the use of menu-driven and context-sensitive help programs. Menu-driven help programs present drop-down menus that offer topics organized similarly to a table of contents. Context-sensitive help programs offer users assistance based on the specific task that they are engaged in.

Computer-based training (CBT) is valuable for training employees if employee turnover requires frequent training, if large numbers of users are being trained, or if the content being presented is not subject to change. There are two types of CBT: linear CBT and branching CBT. Linear CBT gives lessons in a fixed sequence while branching CBT allows trainees to maneuver throughout the program and learn more about specific topics that they are interested in.

Online Links

HTML Visual Tutorial Series Parts 1-12 (Page 45)
www.visualtutorials.com/html.htm?goto-html/_information

Salon.com (Page 50)
www.salon.com

Search Engine Web sites (Page 53)
www.altavista.com
www.askjeeves.com
www.google.com
www.webcrawler.com

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