Hyperviews Online

by Heather Hedden, Online SIG member and Coordinator, Web Indexing SIG, American Society of Indexers

There are some good books on creating website indexes:

Website Indexes: Visitors to Content in Two Clicks
by James Lamb, 2006
ISBN: 978-1-4116-7937-5
Available from http://www.lulu.com/content/300848

Website Indexing: Enhancing Access to Information within Websites, 2nd edition.
by Glenda Browne and Jonathan Jermey, 2004
Available from http://www.webindexing.biz/WebsiteIndexing2Ed.htm or from http://www.lulu.com/content/225548

Beyond Book Indexing: How to Get Started in Web Indexing, Embedded Indexing, and Other Computer-Based Media
edited by Diane Brenner and Marilyn Rowland, 2000.
ISBN: 1-57387-081-1
Avialable from http://books.infotoday.com/books/BeyondBookIndex.shtml

Additional information on website indexing can be found on the Web Indexing SIG site, including: articles, presentations, and courses/training.

Announcement by Heather Hedden

The joint international conference of the American Society of Indexers and the Indexing and Abstracting Society of Canada, to be held in Toronto June 15-17, has a number of sessions and workshops that would be of interest to those in the field of online content, especially those who would like to know more about creating online indexes.

Below is just a sampling of the program: (more…)

Our Online SIG web services team, Lou Quillio and Destry Wion, keep us up-to-date on news of the Web and publish educational articles frequently too.

Destry has an online journal with an RSS feed. Subscribe to receive frequent reminders of timely articles on topics related to open source web development and technical communication.

Lou posts news and articles on the STC Forum. Frequently these have instructions for key activities like incorporating an RSS feed in a website or installing a personal wiki.

The Online SIG is very fortunate to have volunteers who are so generous in sharing their knowledge and providing services to other members. Thank you, Destry and Lou, for your work this past year and for continuing in the new STC year.

Recent news includes “Web 2.0 and the enterprise,” reporting on uses of wikis and blogs for collaboration in business and on trends in marketing software to businesses. In particular IBM recently announced QED wiki, quick and easily done wiki, to allow people to aggregate information from the web for use in analysis of business situations. The concept is building custom web applications very quickly.

IBM Task Modeler is a tool for rapidly creating and analyzing models of human activity as a hierarchy of tasks and related elements.

An information architect can use Task Modeler to design DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) maps. A usability practitioner can produce either classic HTA (Hierarchical Task Analysis) diagrams or RAG (Roles and Goals) diagrams.

For detailed information about this tool (posted February 9, 2006) visit http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/taskmodeler

Reports prepared by each committee for the May 2006 STC Board meeting are posted for STC members only at http://www.stc.org/stcmembers/commReports01.asp

This year STC has expanded use of the web for communication in many ways. Navigation on the STC website, http://www.stc.org has been improved and the content expanded. An RSS feed is available for news. Minutes of the Board meetings are posted at http://www.stc.org/about/boardMinutes01.asp

We have the STC Forum, http://stcforum.org. Members can also submit questions at Ask STC: http://www.stc.org/FAQ/ask.stc.aspx

Visit the STC website to see other ways communication has expanded and improved this year, and check the report of the Technology Committee to see future plans: http://www.stc.org/stcmembers/commReports01.asp

Message from the Online SIG Manager, April 25, 2006 

From 1994 to 2002, the Online SIG published a newsletter, Hyperviews Online. In 2005 the Online SIG resumed publishing news and information on a static website: http://stcsig.org/oi, where you will also find all the issues of Hyperviews Online through 2002.

This site brings Hyperviews Online back as a continuously updated publication, and replaces the static site. We are using the WordPress open source content management software for Hyperviews Online.

To start, we will use the default theme and its default characteristics, except for changes we can make in the administration panel without extensive editing of the PHP code. That allows us to post meaningful information quickly, and we can figure out the customizations we want to make as we go along.

You are invited to leave a comment. To prevent spam, the administrator often approves all comments so please post just once. If you are an Online SIG member you are invited to register and become a contributor. If you’d like to be a contributor, please write to the SIG manager, ann@annlwiley.com.

Because this post is receving a lot of spam, we’ll close it to comments. There is some information about workflow in the comments, that we need to append here.

A member with the “Contributor role” is a Contributor and can submit comments, write posts (that is, write and edit), and manage posts and comments. This includes viewing posts and comments from a list.

Members with the “Author role” can submit comments, write posts (that is, write and edit), and manage posts and comments. This includes viewing posts and comments from a list. An Author can publish posts, while a contributor can post drafts only. An author can also upload files.

Members with the “Editor role” can submit comments, write and edit posts and pages, and manage posts, pages, categories, and comments. This includes viewing posts and pages from a list, and editing and deleting both. An Editor can view all categories and comments in a list, create, edit, and delete categories, and moderate, edit and delete comments. An Editor can also add and manage links.

A member with the “Administrator role” can do everything that an Editor can do, and change many characteristics of the site as well. This includes changing the presentation, working with plugins, adding and modifying the permissions of users, setting options, and importing comments. (This post was updated and the comments removed May 11, 2006.)

There are many Wikis on the web. A few examples of particular interest to technical communicators are listed here, along with tools identified as potentially useful for technical documentation. (more…)

A few key titles and sites on the subject of web design are listed for quick reference. If you have updates for this list, please leave a comment. (more…)

Web accessibility is important to STC. We have a special interest group that addresses all aspects of accessibility. The Online SIG is developing a list of resources on the topic. Items identified to date are listed here. (more…)

Online SIG members are involved in developing and maintaining intranets. We continually assemble links to resources in that area and list them here. (more…)

Rosenfeld Media has announced (April 21, 2006) that Donna Maurer has agreed to write a book on card sorting. Rosendfeld Media’s initial books will provide user experience designers with practical help applying design methods such as card sorting. Donna is one of the world’s leading experts on that subject.

Donna’s book, and all Rosenfeld Media books, will be developed with input from readers. Each Rosenfeld Media book will have a dedicated site where readers and the author can share information and questions. Please visit the site for Donna’s book and subscribe to its RSS feed. Donna has started her exploration of card sorting for the book with a brief survey which you are invited to take.

Lou Quillio provided this post in February to get us started, and keeping it preserves the Archives. It is here in case we need it for experimentation.

It’s posted in Departments and Topics so those two overall categories will appear in the sidebar.

To show how the defaults display images, here is an uploaded file:

Here is TEST PDF.