Every Page is Page One
Published on 3. December 2013
290 pages
978-1-4920-0194-2 (ISBN)
Description
The Web changes how people use content; not just content on the Web, but all content. If your content is not easy to find and immediately helpful, readers will move on almost at once. We are all children of the Web, and we come to any information system, including product documentation, looking for the search box and expecting every search to work like Google. There is no first, last, previous, next, up, or back anymore. Every Page is Page One.In this ground-breaking book, Mark Baker looks beyond the usual advice on writing for the Web, and beyond the idea of topic-based writing merely as an aid to efficiency and reuse, to explore how readers really use information in the age of the Web and to lay out an approach to planning, creating, managing, and organizing topic-based documentation that really works for the reader.
More details
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
10/2013
XML Press
€31.50
Shipment within 3-4 weeks
Content
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Table of Contents
- Foreword
- Preface: In the Context of the Web
- Audience
- Discussion
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1. Introduction
- Every page is page one
- Why do we still write books?
- About the book
- Part I. Content in the Context of the Web
- Chapter 2. Include it all. Filter it afterward.
- Just Google it
- The long tail
- Authority and experience
- Aggregation and curation
- Filter it afterward
- Chapter 3. The Distributed Nature of Content on the Web
- How we use the Web
- Dynamic semantic clustering
- Chapter 4. Information Architecture Top Down
- Book navigation
- The trouble with TOCs
- Curriculum versus classification
- The limits of hierarchies
- The cultural bias toward hierarchies
- The rise of the Frankenbooks
- Faceted navigation
- The limits of classification
- Where top-down works
- Chapter 5. Information Architecture Bottom Up
- A web of subject affinities
- Irregular subject affinities
- Subject affinities are not citations
- Topics as hubs
- The flattening problem
- Broader, deeper, more dynamic
- Should we abandon top-down navigation?
- The role of lists
- Part II. Characteristics of Every Page is Page One Topics
- Chapter 6. What is a Topic?
- Building-block topics
- Presentational topics
- Every Page is Page One topics
- Economics and the evolution of topics
- DITA and Information Mapping
- Topics and the Web
- Every page is still page one even if the reader reads several
- Characteristics of EPPO topics
- Chapter 7. EPPO Topics are Self-contained
- Self-contained, not all alone
- The information scent of self-contained topics
- Chapter 8. EPPO Topics have a Specific and Limited Purpose
- The scope of a topic
- Task-based writing
- Derived purpose
- Defining the purpose of a topic
- Topic purpose vs. user purpose
- Purpose and topic size
- Decision support and the reader's purpose
- Purpose and findability
- Chapter 9. EPPO Topics Conform to a Type
- The evolution of topic types
- Discovering and defining topic types
- Discovering topic types
- Defining topic types
- Handling optional material
- Serving the commercial purpose
- Concept, task, and reference reconsidered
- The origins of concept, task, and reference
- A task is not a procedure
- A reference is more than a topic
- Everything else is not a concept
- Chapter 10. EPPO Topics Establish their Context
- Establishing context
- Context and the imprecision of search
- Chapter 11. EPPO Topics Assume the Reader is Qualified
- Reader dependencies vs. subject dependencies
- Determining the qualified reader
- Choosing the level of understanding
- Avoid arbitrary labels
- Qualification and findability
- Chapter 12. EPPO Topics Stay on One Level
- Books change levels at the author's fiat
- Keeping topics on one level
- Chapter 13. EPPO Topics Link Richly
- Links and the democratization of knowledge
- Linking and findability
- Part III. Writing Every Page is Page One Topics
- Chapter 14. Writing Every Page is Page One Topics
- Textbooks vs. user assistance
- Writing topics
- Topics are self-contained
- Topics have a specific and limited purpose
- Topics conform to a type
- Topics establish their context
- Topics assume the reader is qualified
- Topics stay on one level
- Topics link richly
- The question of style
- Concerning reference information
- Concerning tutorials
- Concerning videos
- Videos and linking
- Videos as topics
- Videos as objects
- Chapter 15. Every Page is Page One Topics and the Big Picture
- Books and the big picture
- The priority of the big picture
- Writing the big-picture topic
- Finding the end of the string
- Pathfinder topics
- Chapter 16. Sequence of Tasks vs. Sequence of Topics
- Working backwards
- Chapter 17. EPPO and Minimalism
- EPPO as a platform for minimalism
- Is EPPO minimalist?
- Minimal vs. comprehensive
- Chapter 18. Structured Writing
- The varieties of structured writing
- Rhetorically structured writing
- Computably structured writing
- A word about SPFE
- Other forms of computable structure
- Open and closed formats
- The varieties of computable structures
- Benefits of computably structured writing
- Improved content quality
- Guidance for writers
- Conformance and quality
- Linking
- Content manipulation
- Future proofing
- Single sourcing
- Reuse
- Content exchange
- Structured writing and bottom-up organization
- Chapter 19. Metadata
- The meaning of metadata
- Topics should merit their metadata
- Metadata comes first
- Chapter 20. Linking
- Crowdsourced links
- Soft linking based on subject affinities
- Soft linking is not indirection
- Soft linking and list generation
- Chapter 21. Reuse
- Reuse on the Web
- Static vs. dynamic reuse
- Other forms of reuse
- Reuse, linking, and interactive pages
- Chapter 22. Making the Case for Every Page is Page One
- EPPO and resource constraints
- EPPO and continuous delivery
- EPPO and content change
- EPPO and content aging
- EPPO and agile methodologies
- EPPO and content management
- EPPO and PDF/help
- EPPO and content marketing
- EPPO and DITA
- EPPO and wikis
- Making the case for technical communication on the Web
- Competitors will steal our ideas
- Our users prefer PDF
- No one reads the documentation anyway
- Chapter 23. Afterword: EPPO, but Not for Everything
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
