Lesson 6: Modifying Styles

In this lesson, I want to take some time to focus on the "prettiness" of our output. Perhaps I'm a little type A about this, but I absolutely like things to look nice, even during the development process. I hate for things to look ugly. When I first became a technical communicator, I started (as most of us do) in the desktop publishing area. Essentially, I took someone else's writing and made it look pretty!

One of the strengths inherent in many of today's documentation tools (including MS Word) is the ability to separate the content from how it will appear to the end user. This separation is possible because of styles.

Styles are typically defined in a separate file from where you are creating your documentation. In the example you will see momentarily, I am using MadCap Flare, which utilizes a separate style sheet with a file extension .css. Every new topic is automatically associated with this file. The definition for each element in my document is stored in the file and then accessible from the topics I create. For example, if I want the title element to be 15pt bold Times New Roman font, I define it in the style sheet file and then apply the Title style to the text I want to change. Here's a demo of this very idea:

The style sheet can be modified for both online and print mediums in Flare. Watch how I modify the paragraph style (p) for print with a serif font here.

Your homework is to modify the default style sheet to your heart's content!

Lesson 5: Creating and Managing Topics

Now that we have our initial project configured and our renaming done, it's time to start creating! This is arguably my favorite part of the process. I love documentation (obviously) and as soon as we get through with this series about multi-purposing and reusing, I'm going to do a series of lessons on the writing process.

Today, let's look at how to create a topic with reuse and multi-purposing in mind. First, creating a topic. The following screencast describes how I take one of the sample html files we created in Lesson 4 and make it my own.

As a side note: I'm going to be using Screenr for my videos from now on. I recommend picking a product and staying with it. Having your resources in too many places is a bad habit and will not make your documentation any easier.



Next, let's look at how to consistently apply styles to our text. This is CRITICAL to preventing gray hairs when the committee decides the font is too large or needs to be a different color. Instead of having to modify each file one-by-one, we can simply modify the stylesheet and all topics/documents that are part of the project will be updated immediately! By the way, this is a huge time saver when using Microsoft Word/Excel too! Try to apply styles consistently.



Finally, let's look at how to create a new topic. This will be handy when we run out of Flare's sample project topics!

Lesson 4: Getting Started

Voice back: check; work conference over: check; child's school activities finished: check... And that's what tends to happen in the life of a writer - life gets in the way of what we like to do best!

Today, we're going to focus on getting our project started. I'm going to record a couple of videos using two of my favorite free screen casting tools: Jing and Screenr. Both are robust programs that let you record what you are doing on the screen in 5-minute bursts.

Neither product allows you to edit your recording - for Jing, you can upgrade to big brother Camtasia Studio to get full video editing capability. The major difference, and it's kind of a big deal IMHO, is that Screenr only requires that you have Java installed. If you do, you're ready to go - navigate to the website and start recording immediately! Jing requires you to download and install a client onto your computer. Jing has the added benefit of allowing you to capture screen images in the standard graphic formats.

Before going much further, it's a good idea to point out that I'm using a Logitech headset here at home. It's a mid-range edition around $45.00 and works fairly well. At my day job, we invested a little bit and bought a great little Samson GoMic. This thing is awesome! Crystal clear audio in multiple directions - and it fits in your pocket! Check out my Amazon widget to the right to get links to both of these tools.

Alrighty then! Let's get our project going. Video 1 demonstrates how to start a project using MadCap Flare. This video was completed using Screenr. Note that you can see it full screen by clicking the funny little square icon at the bottom of the screen.

Now, let's look at how to get cleaned up a little so we are ready to go for tomorrow's lesson - creating a recipe! Video 2 (completed using Jing) demonstrates how to take the sample template project and clean it up a bit to make it relevant to the project we are creating. Make this recording full screen by clicking the funny little TV icon in the bottom right corner of the screen.