3 Tricks to Sharpen Your Screenshots
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Diagrams, charts, and images all serve to enhance academic, business and technical documents. Without them the reader's attention would flag and their interest wane.
Visual devices, such as screenshots, balance the text to image ratio.
Long pages of dense, unbroken text will scare aware most readers.
Proposals, case studies, user guides and other such material all benefit from crisp graphics. These help to illustrate the subject you're discussing. And as they can also be used in presentations and web-pages it's important that you know how to take good, clean screenshots.
We've all seen messy screenshots taken in a hurry and shoddily presented. Instead of enhancing the material in question, it makes it look cheap, amateur, and disorganized.
I'd like to share a few tricks I've learnt regarding screenshots - maybe you'll get something out of these
1. Turn on Auto-hide
Use the auto-hide feature in Windows to hide the toolbar at the bottom of your screen.
Screenshots should not show the applications open on your computer.
Instead of cropping these in Paint or another image-editing package, turn on auto-hide. This will automatically hide the toolbar. It also gives you a larger area to capture. This is very useful if you have a small monitor or use a laptop.
- Right-click on the Start button (lower left corner of your screen)
- Select Properties, Taskbar tab, and turn off Auto hide.
The toolbar is now hidden unless you mouse-over this area.
2. Highlighting Actions
Putting images into User Guides and other such material is definitely a step in the right direction. However you can go one better by showing where in the screenshot the activity occurs.
In other words, show the reader where to click or highlight the area you're discussing.
Don't force them to scan your image (printouts will be in black and white) for the item you're discussing.
- Open the image in Paint.
- Select the Line option and choose the second line size.
- Select the Rectangle option and choose Red from the color palate.
- Draw a red rectangle around the active area.
- Paste this back into Word.
Highlighting active areas will enhance your documents, allowing readers to gather information faster and appreciate the quality of your material.
3. Layout trick
You've taking your screenshots and placed them in Word. But something's wrong!
They're all different sizes. Your document looks terrible!
How can you resize all the images in your document in 1 minute?
You can fix this by resizing the images and giving them a uniform appearance.
Instead of resizing each one manually, use the repeat key (F4) to automate the process.
Here's the trick!
- Right-click on an image
- Select Format Picture.
- In the Size tab, adjust the Height, for example 7.5 cm.
Tip: The Width is adjusted automatically if the 'Lock Ration Aspect' option is selected.
- Click OK.
- Select the next image and click F4.
This automatically resizes the next image.
With this simple trick you can resize all your images in no time!
Ivan
PS - let me know if you have any tips for creating great screenshots
Labels: design
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My Favourite Print Screen Trick
Here's my favorite trick when taking Print Screens. Some people call these screenshots or screen dumps.
Tip: The print screen button (PrintScrn) is next to F12 on your keyboard.
1. To take a screenshot, press PrintScrn.
2. Open Word and Paste (Edit, Paste) the screenshot into your document.
This is fine if you're capturing the entire screen.
3. But what do happens if you're using an application, such as SAP, with multiple floating screens? you don't want to capture all these screens floating over each other. Looks terrible and too much work to fix in Paint.
How do you capture the active 'floating' screen only?
Is there a quick way to avoid editing the entire screen?
Here's the trick!
4. Hold down ALT and then press PrintScrn.
This captures the active screen only.
This trick can save you many hours editing and tidying up images.
What tricks do you know?
Send them to me at ivan (att) klariti (.) com
Ivan
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How much can I make as a Tech Writer?
The median expected salary for a typical Technical Writing Supervisor 1 in the United States is $57,580.
The Salary Wizard at salary.com has some terrific interactive tools for finding the base salaries, average salaries, and top paying roles in this field.
They also offer the "Basic Salary Report based on broad national data, reported exclusively by HR depts of thousands of employers from all sizes, industries and locations."
Although these numbers are based on national data, the results are most similar to the data from companies with approximately 1,000 employees. If your company is bigger, smaller or in a unique industry, we strongly recommend using a premium report to ensure the most accurate answer."
Based on their calculations, your Estimated Paycheck Results would be:
Bi-weekly Gross Pay $ 2,214.62
Federal Withholding $ 400.23
Social Security $ 137.31
Medicare $ 32.11
State $ 0.00
Net Paycheck Estimate $ 1,644.97
Take a look at the charts over at: http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/
Ivan
Talk is cheap. Use Yahoo! Messenger to make PC-to-Phone calls. Great rates starting at 1¢/min.
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Considering a move into Technical Writing
Allan Hoffman on M
"To some people, any job with the word "writer" in the title looks like it must be a blast -- the next best thing to working on episodes of "Desperate Housewives." If spotting the job title technical writer in your job search whets your appetite to learn more, here's a guide to the profession."
He highlights that the mean (average) salary for technical writers and editors in the US was $61,730, according to STC's most recent STC salary survey.
Their site is at www.stc.org. You might find the salary stats in the Press Release section.
It was there but has now been moved elsewhere!
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Correct your Word Documents Automatically
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
2. In the Replace box, type a word or phrase that you often mistype or misspell - for example, type Micorsoft.
How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messengers low PC-to-Phone call rates.
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Using AutoCorrect to correct errors as you type
Here's a quick tip to AutoCorrect errors as you type in Word:
- Capitalization options - AutoCorrect can capitalize the first word in a sentence, the names of days of the week, the first letter of text in a table cell, and so on.
- AutoCorrect entries - AutoCorrect can use a list of built-in corrections, called AutoCorrect entries, to detect and correct typos, misspelled words, and common symbols. You can easily remove unwanted entries or add your own entries.
- Spelling checker corrections - AutoCorrect can use corrections that are generated by the spelling checker's main dictionary.
1. On the Tools menu, click AutoCorrect Options.Prevent specific capitalization and spelling corrections:
2. In the Replace box, type a word or phrase that you often mistype or misspell - for example, type Oralce.
3. In the With box, type the correct spelling of the word - for example, type Oracle.
4. Click Add.
- On the Tools menu, click AutoCorrect Options.
- Click Exceptions. Do one or more of the following to prevent AutoCorrect from:
- Click the First Letter tab, and then type the abbreviation (including the period) in the
- Don't capitalize after box.
To correct a word that contains mixed uppercase and lowercase letters:
- Click the INitial CAps tab, and then type the word in the Don't correct box.
- Click the Other Corrections tab, and then type the misspelled word in the Don't correct box.
- Click Add, and then click Close.
More at: http://webmarketing.ivanwalsh.com
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Creating a Drop Cap in MS Word
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Here's a quick tip!
To create a drop cap in Word:
- Select the first letter in the paragraph.
- Select Drop Cap from the Format menu bar.
- Choose None, Dropped, or In Margin.
- Select the type of font, the number of line to drop, and the distance from the text.
- Click Ok.
Ivan
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Writing Proposals –Analyze the Buyers Mindset or Else!
In theory, responding to an RFP should be a simply task.
As each RFP has a fixed set of requirements you, the bidder, should simply have to answer these in order to be considered.
But life is not that simple...
Let consider the following scenario:
"As the RFP’s author, with a significant stake in the project’s success, I am very anxious that I could select the wrong partner and jeopardize both my own position and also the agency that I represent.
It is for this reason that you, as a prospective contractor, need to convince me that you possess the ability to address both my immediate (and long-term) requirements as captured in the RFP and also those that I may have overlooked or omitted, for whatever reason.
Therefore, when you respond to my RFP, it is imperative that you answer every point in the document correctly but also consider the possibility that there are areas to need to be explored for this project to succeed."
In the competitive world of government contracting, it is not enough to merely answer the requirements as set out in the RFP.
You have to go much further than this; to win this contract you need to convince me that you understand WHY I have prepared this RFP and are sensitive to my needs, both spoken and unspoken, during this project.
After all, I am expecting that your expertise will uncover areas that I have overlooked and you can resolve these without exploiting me financially.
Most proposals that an RFP evaluation team receive are very similar in tone, content, style, and cost.
For the most part, they are dull, formulaic, and repetitive.
Almost all are congested with jaded business clichés, the buzzword of the month, and resort to pseudo-jargon whenever possible.
Though I have years of experience in my industry sector, the proposal’s authors frequently speak down to me, avoid the key ‘pain points’ highlighted in our RFP and attempt to impress me with new technologies, many of which they have not even implemented themselves.
In short, despite what their executive summary may profess, they make no real effort to understand my needs and even worse, don’t appear to grasp the urgency behind this proposal nor the months of effort my team put into it. It feels that we were simply another proposal on their lengthy to-do list.
Question: Do you know how a proposal is typically evaluated in your country?
If not, contact your national procurement agency and ask for the guidelines on proposal evaluation. If none are available, contact the government agency who issued the RFP and ask if they have guidelines. You can do this either before you submit your proposal or during the clarification stages.
With this in mind, if you sincerely want to win my business, you need to differentiate your proposal from the rest of the pack as otherwise they are politely refused. Future submissions from your company will not be anticipated with much enthusiasm.
So, if you acknowledge this and want to raise the profile of your submissions, consider the following.
Identify the individuals in my team who will ‘buy’ this project.
After all, I don’t make the final decision on my own. On the contrary, I will consult with my colleagues through-out the entire procurement process.
Making an impression involves analyzing the buyer’s interests. In other words, you need to consider what types of buyers are involved in the procurement process and then write your proposal around their needs. For example:
Technical
What does the technical buyer look for?
· Is it a track record of similar deployments or is s/he interested in a particular skill-set?
· This person’s role is to screen out technologies that do not align with their strategy.
· It’s also to determine if you really have the expertise you claim you have.
This person(s) may be in the business for many years and could be (read: will be) suspicious when dealing with unproven consultants. S/he has been burnt before and does not want to engage another ‘cowboy’ who will ruin their project.
How do you prove you are trustworthy?
Finances
What is the financial controller interested in?
This person will have the final word on the project’s go-ahead.
They are solely concerned with the bottom line and how you will impact their profit margin. This person is afraid that you will exploit grey areas in the contract to your advantage, such as forcing the project into extended change control and accumulating additional man days.
How do you reduce these fears?
They will ask colleagues (i.e. due diligence) to get an idea of how you operate and will listen to those who have worked with you. If you are new in town, they may make them more nervous as you could potentially disappear in mid-project or prove to be a totally unsuitable match.
Operations
How does your proposal go down with the Operation buyer?
This person will work with your team on a daily basis and could be concerned with ‘rumors’ that you will try to bully or intimidate staff during projects. Some consultancies come with a very tarnished name!
This person is concerned that s/he may be excluded from the project’s success or blamed if it fails. After your team has left, this person will have to use the solution that you will have implemented. Remember: one reason you are being contracted is because this person’s team do not have the skills to implement the solution by themselves – this area can be a very sensitive!
Now that we know that there is a ‘team’ of buyers, each of whom may have a different appreciation of your proposal, you need to prepare all communications with this in mind.
The buyers know that their proposal is not perfect and that there are gaps, inconsistencies, and errors in its construction. But they expect you to accept this and patiently help them to remedy the situation.
What I’m emphasizing here is that you need to build trust with us, the buyers, and unless you have a physiological profile of us in mind, your proposal will probably miss the mark.
You see, we have never met face to face. You don’t even know my name. But, I may know quite a lot about you – and some of what I’ve heard may not be very nice.
If you take this on board, your proposal needs to go to great length to assuage these fears and demonstrate repeatedly that you are not just going through the motions with this bid but have a very compelling argument that will justify us in awarding you with this business.
Profiling the buyers
Keeping in mind that we are a team of buyers, you need to prepare profiles for each role. You won’t get it 100% right the first time, but you will definitely be moving in the right direction while your competitors are laboriously cranking out the same ‘boiler-plate’ proposal as per usual.
To understand the buyers:
· Classify the team members based on their role and estimate their input (i.e. influence) into the final approval.
· Define each member as a buying type. Note that some buyers may have more that one role, e.g. the CTO may have a role in the technical evaluation and signing off the project budget.
For each buyer, identify their fears, hopes, anxieties and what they would consider to be major success factors.
Put these in a matrix and cross-reference this when evaluating your own proposal. Apply weights and values if appropriate.
Once you have completed this task, the next step is to write your response with these buyers in mind. Remember: you are not writing to an anonymous disembodied entity – there is a very real person examining your proposal.
With these profiles at hand, you can blend into your proposal all those points that answer all the
unspoken requirements not laid out in the proposal.
PS: Read more at www.klariti.com and look in the Proposal Writing section
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Microsoft Word compared against Adobe Framemaker
This article compares Microsoft Word and Adobe FrameMaker by examining the following key areas:
Ability to create Long Documents
Short Documents
Using Microsoft Word as a DTP Tool
Printing and Type
Cross-platform capabilities
Word's Nice and Not So Nice Features
Importing Graphics
Indexing
Over the past decade, Adobe has created a suite of publications software, with FrameMaker fulfilling the role for documentation generation. Adobe said that development plans for the immediate future include enhancing the import and export of files from one format to another.
Companies that choose FrameMaker are safe-guarded regardless of future documentation standards, i.e. XML, SGML, Acrobat, or HTML.
Long Documents
Word Strengths
Word doesn't handle large documents well and begins to have difficulties when it goes over 100 pages of standard text, i.e. combination of graphic and text formatting.
Compiling the TOC and indexes for multiple files takes much longer in Word than FrameMaker.
Microsoft Word is not a desktop publishing program — It’s a word processor.
Word’s Weaknesses
Word doesn't handle large documents well and begins to have difficulties when it goes over 100 pages of standard text, i.e. combination of graphic and text formatting.
Compiling the TOC and indexes for multiple files takes much longer in Word than FrameMaker.
Microsoft Word is not a desktop publishing program — It’s a word processor.
FrameMaker Strengths
Ideal for large books i.e. 200 pages +.
Before you start, define your template. Using templates in Word is far from ideal as they tend to corrupt when under stress, i.e. if you have too many bullet list and graphic import, it will start to generate error, such as inserting paragraph marks in the header and footers.
FrameMaker Weaknesses
Expensive
Steep learning curve
Possible being phased out by Adobe. Replaced by InDesign
The real advantage to FrameMaker is the ease at which documentation, indices, and cross-references is easily updated. Page, section, figure, table, and even equation numbering can follow any scheme you can think up. FrameMaker is best on 1280 x 1024 monitors, and can be difficult to use on small screens.
FrameMaker is designed specifically for long complex documents, which can be edited, updated and changed, including the TOC and indexes very easily.
Short Documents
If your documents are under 100 pages on average, FrameMaker is probably not required. Also, the word processing functions in FrameMaker i.e. spellcheck, redo, undo, sort, are not up to Word's
Word as a DTP Tool
Word was not designed as a DTP program — it's a word processing program that has added features over releases, so that if can be used for less intensive publishing requirements. To be more specific:
It does not handle any color separations
Poor support for page layout and/or graphic placement i.e. you cant rotate graphics.
Not designed as a structured document tool, i.e. cross-referencing other books. Master Document feature is meant to address this, but is notorious for collapsing.
Printing
FrameMaker is excellent for producing printed manuals. Very little deterioration occurs when printing complex documents across a range of printers and operating systems.
FrameMaker is more connected to the publishing world, and has very close ties to Adobe's other technologies, such as the Adobe Type Manager, Postscript and Acrobat PDF.
If you have to print large documents in Word, you'll most likely end up having to split the document into smaller files, changing the header and footers accordingly, hard-code the TOC's and having nightmares with any cross-references. Avoid at all costs!
Type
FrameMaker's quality of typography is better than most DTP packages, and significantly superior to Word. FrameMaker is very useful for intensive printing jobs where, for example, you can utilize Postscript.
Cross-platform
Frame's cross-platform capabilities are very impressive. No other commercial DTP package runs across so many platforms.
Frame prints identically on Unix/Mac/Windows — but you need to be using the same FrameMaker release.
Word's Nice Features
Word is not without merit and has some nice features:
When you highlight a word, Word highlights the next space, which improves cut & paste.
The Insert Symbols dialog box is faster and more intuitive than FrameMaker's Help KeyboardMaps mechanism.
Word offers several views of a document, including a non-WYSIWYG view that works well on typical landscape monitors.
Autotext, Autocorrect and the Macro Recorder are very helpful.
Word's Not so Nice Features
Formatting diagrams and images is awkward and prone to crashing the system.
Temporary Word files will eat up your disk space, and sometimes don’t get deleted from the cache.
You can't have text on one page with different directions, headers and footers horizontal and, for example, a vertical pictures description.
Importing Graphics
There is a distinct difference between they both handle graphics:
Frame imports graphics, which have been either copied directly into the FrameMaker file, or referenced from another location. This method is recommended as the files size doesn’t bloat and when you update a graphic, it is automatically updated in the document.
Word copies the file directly into the document.
Therefore, when you change or update the source graphic, you need to import it back in again, re-size and layout it etc. Importing files into Word tends to increase the file size rather dramatically.
We've seen files double from 2MB to 4MB and continue to double until they reached 64MB – with no additional graphics been added. When Word has difficulties, it tends to expand in size. This can result in been locked out of your document, as your PC will run out of memory.
Also remember that because Word copies the files in, rather than import them, when you make updates to your application, and screenshots needs to be updated, you have to go through all the Word documents again. This is very expensive and alone can justify the value of purchasing the FrameMaker product.
With graphic heavy files, Word will grind to a standstill and not display any graphics towards the final pages, if you get that far. It consumes all memory available and then some more.
Indexing
FrameMaker has very advanced indexing capabilities:
You can index to several levels
You can provide different types of indexes and lists, e.g. have an index of multiple chapters (each chapter being a separate file)
You can have lists of the tables and figures, which are compiled automatically. These are automatically brought in by referencing the file, and are automatically formatted
You can track the imported graphics on a list, and have the number of pages in each chapter, TOC, index, glossary created automatically in another compiled index
Microsoft has rudimentary indexing, but nothing near the capability of multiple indexing that FrameMaker has.
Cross-references
FrameMaker automatically cross-references document paragraphs, including those in multiple files. Cross-references include:
Text
Paragraph numbering
Figure titles
Table titles
Numbers
Microsoft Word does have these advanced features.
Formatting
FrameMaker again has very powerful features, such as:
Formatting multiple paragraph number schemes within a document.
Creating bullets with any character type.
Running headers and footers using referenced paragraphs, i.e.,
Paragraph heads.
Formatting tables using table templates, ensuring that you use a consistent format for each type of table.
Word has a limited and mutually exclusive form of paragraph number schemes. The formatting is tied to the rest of the paragraphs, making it extremely difficult to format different fonts, styles, sizes, etc. within the same numbering stream, or to have multiple numbering streams. Word does not number your tables or your figures.
Printing
Word changes fonts and pagination unpredictably when you change printer drivers. That means you can't proof on laser prints, unless your laser writer drivers give you reliable PostScript output on the page size (plus crop marks) that you'll need for final output.
Generating TOC
FrameMaker creates TOCs and indexes across the whole book.
In Word, you can make indexes and TOCs using the Reference Document program.
User Groups
Word User Groups tend to be more active than those for FrameMaker, partially because of Microsoft's support.
Converting from Word to FrameMaker
The overall conversion process is time-consuming, with an initial expensive outlay, and may involve template design and other production factors. Before making the plunge, you might want to get a demo, produce some documents and seeing how you like it.
Online Help
If you are planning on providing on-line help for a Windows-based software product, Word's conversion to on-line help is a lot easier than Frame's.
Reference Documents
In Word, if you create large documents, when you come to printing all sections and creating TOC's, difficulties usually arise. Word is not designed for this, and what you are asking it to do it beyond its scope.
If your stuck with Word, be prepared to ship files that you know will deteriorate or collapse when the user opens them. You can side-step this by saving the word file to PDF, and putting maximum security features on i.e. the user cannot modify the file contents. Get FrameMaker instead.
Once Word begins to degrade, everything will go awry and you'll get mis-numbered pages, TOC entries with unresolved pages, mangled headers and footer, and other idiosyncrasies.
Graphics
FrameMaker is best for document creation that includes large amounts of graphics, and graphic layout re-formatting i.e. rotation.
Word's performance degrades with imported graphic files —you'll soon hear your PC desperately grinding in the background trying to swap memory—and the file sizes in Word increase to enormous proportions during graphic imports, beyond all reasonable logic.
Remember, when you import a low-res file format, e.g. GIF/JPG, into Word, it is converted into BMP, which partly explains the sudden increase.
Templates
Creating templates in Word is fairly limited, as its essentially designed for writing letters. Also, you can't open a Word template while other users are using a document based on this template.
Pagination
Word tends to change pagination when you change printer driver, even if the fonts have not changed, ruining indexes and tables of contents.
OLE Support
FrameMaker doesn't support OLE.
Bookmaking
FrameMaker is fast and intuitive.
Endnotes
Word supports true endnotes.
Frame does not. FrameMaker has a workaround using cross-references, but this is cumbersome when working with a book with many component documents.
Long footnotes
Word supports long footnotes, i.e. notes that must be split across successive pages.
FrameMaker does not support long footnotes. If a footnote is too long to fit on the page on which its marker appears, the entire footnote text is moved to the next available page.
SGML
With FrameMaker+SGML, you have the combination of FrameMaker's features, and create an SGML document that can be used with a database search engine.
Adobe and FrameMaker future plans
Adobe has assembled a collection of documentation software, with FrameMaker central to that strategy. Adobe said that development plans for the immediate future include enhancing the import and export of files from one format to another.
Companies that choose FrameMaker are safe-guarded regardless of future documentation standards, i.e. XML, SGML, Acrobat, or HTML.
Contact me if you have any quesitons and I'll try to get back to you.
Ivan (att) klariti (dott) com
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International Procurement Resources
Monday, April 10, 2006
For those who are involved in proposal writing, tenders and procurement, there is very useful catch-all page at http://www.proposalwriter.com/intprocure.html##europe that lists Business Opportunities and Procurement links for Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Deborah Kluge offers some terrific insights into dealing with the US Government if you're into Requests For Proposals.
http://www.proposalwriter.com/doingbiz.html
Some free proposal checklists on this site also.
Worth bookmarking if tenders are on your agenda.
Ivan
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Keyboard shortcuts for posting on Blogger.com
If you are familar with the keyboard shortcuts in MS Word, you'll be delighted to know that Blogger also offers the same type of functionality.
For those who are serious about blogging, I'd highly recommend that you start using these shortcut options. It speeds up the publishing process and allows you to focus on other tasks.
Here are my favourite keyboard shortcuts for use while writing posts.
control + b = Bold
control + i = Italic
control + l = Blockquote (when in HTML-mode only)
control + z = Undo
control + y = Redo
control + shift + a = Link
control + shift + p = Preview
control + d = Save as Draft
control + s = Publish Post
Let me know if you have come across any other useful shortcuts.
Thanks
Ivan
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Technical Writing Ireland
What We Do
We’re a team of writers with an average of 10 years tech writing experience. Our focus is on delivering high-quality documentation that meets your objectives, schedule, and budget.
MS Word Template Design
PS: If you cant find the template or business document you're looking for, send me a "Request A Template" email. Let me know what you're looking for and if we don't have it in our library, we can design it for you asap.
About This Blog
This blog discusses technical writing, proposal writing, making money online, as well as MS Word tips and tricks.
Credits
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