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RE: alternatives to screenshots for Help pages?

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From: Robinson, Norman B - Washington, DC
Date: May 17, 2005 10:47AM

I don't know if it is applicable, but where my organization uses web
applications, I've suggested they simply use the same code as the
application itself. Don't do a screen snapshot - use a copy of the web
content. My purpose is to address several problems that having a fixed
sized bitmap image causes with different screen sizes, ignoring user's
color preferences, and the fact the actual CSS+XHTML is usually (in our
applications) more accessible than the screen snapshot.

It requires an approach to how you present the elements, such as pulling
the code for just the feature or form entry you want to target. For
instance, the designer thinks showing only the search bar illustrates
what they want the user to focus on and eliminated the rest of the
content. But the designer took the code from the actual page and
controls the learning plan for that example. I've suggested the designer
could also take all form elements and redirect them to 'this is for
demonstration only' along with a return for a demo account user.

On some applications it may be easier to consider a demonstration
account. This enables full use and experimentation of the application.
If you are using dynamic web sites you can also embed the instructions
at the beginning of the page for the benefit of all users.

Hope that wasn't too far from your actual question,

Norman