Documanga from Google

Googlers have come up with an awesome document about the architecture of their open-source web browser, Google Chrome. The book grasped 100% of my attention the very moment I opened the link.

This 38-page document is presented as a comic book drawn by the creator of the classic "Understanding Comics", Scott McCloud. The content is rather technical, but the graphics of real Chrome team members and direct speech in baloons are so catchy that I swallowed all the -- otherwise rather boring -- techie stuff immediately and had perhaps the most pleasant tech-reading this year. What a perfect way to tell a story! Grade A!

The rights of the reader

I liked this short discussion of a humorous poster entitled "The rights of the reader" by Daniel Pennac (he wrote a book with the same name). Indeed, this poster is quite in tune with what user-centered technical writers keep in mind as they write. :-)

Hilarious video from Font Conference

Ha-ha-ha!.. Can't stop laughing. :-D

Just imagine typing fonts... gather together and hold a conference! All those TNR, Arial Narrow, Futura, Comic Sans, Wingdings et al starring in a short clip. Acting and makeup are superb! Tech writers and all font-concious people will appreciate. :-)

10 mistakes in icon design

Here goes a handy checklist that helps fight typical mistakes in icon design. The author keeps things simple and gives nice illustrations to support his point. Just what an amateur designer like me would need next time when the need for drawing a simple custom icon arises. :-)

Summary:

1. Insufficient differentiation between icons.
2. Too many elements in one icon.
3. Unnecessary elements.
4. Lack of unity of style within a set of icons.
5. Unnecessary perspective and shadows in small icons.
6. Overly original metaphors.
7. National or social characteristics not being taken into account.
8. Images of real interface elements in icons.
9. Text inside icons.
10. Outside the pixel framework.

P.S. Thanks to Desh for sharing the link.

Trends in web design

Today I was surprised to learn that writing about trends in web design is so popular. Just google for something like "web design trend" and you'll get tonns of opinions and design samples!

The topic is not straightforwardly "techwriting", of course. Nonetheless, taking a look at carefully selected galleries boosts both mood and imagination. :-)

Once again about TOCs

Huh, it feels like my blog needs emergent revival with some fresh posts. ;-)

To start with, here comes yet another (wider) collection of creative and beautiful TOCs. I loved it!

"Nu grammar"

Sarah Maddox posted a summary of the "new grammar" session led by Jonathan Halls at AODC (Australasian Online Documentation and Content Conference) she attended. Her summary hooked me.

Jonathan's interpretation of "grammar" turned out much broader than I've ever took it: "the principles or rules of an art, science or technique". Hmmm... After reading Sarah's post, I took some time to read Jonathan's AODC handout Do you have time to read this? and many points of his "nu grammar" philosophy became clearer.

I agree with Jonathan that (a) in the recent years, communication patterns have changed dramatically (yes, in Russia too!), and (b) technical communicators must therefore respond to people's new expectations towards communication. Yes, we must, though often it's quite a challenge. It's true that people now emphasize the importance of faster, easier, and this way more efficient communication. At my current workplace, I mostly write documents for internal use, and colleagues sometimes ask me to shorten some written piece because they feel frustrated to read that much text. In Russian, we even have a popular ditty for this kind of complaint: "mnogabukav niasilil" -- literally "manyletters couldn'tmanage". :-)

I also agree that many innovations in the techcomm area can help us "win the fight" for readers' / listeners' / watchers' time. I like the ideas of adjusting content for speed reading, delivering information in quickly accessible formats, using collaborative environments, encouraging interactivity and authorship delegation, favoring more conversational style over "official language", etc.

However, I still feel "digital immigrant" rather than "digital native" when it comes to applying "nu grammar" ideas to strictly grammar issues. For example, now and then I'm asked to review my colleagues' documents and emails. When I follow "classical" English grammar and stick to Chicago Manual's guidelines, people say I make their prose too heavy. They want lighter constructions (though sometimes wrong in terms of "classical" English), and make me break my head over rephrases that would be both "light enough" and "grammatically correct" (not to say about clarity).

I just can't reconcile myself with the idea of writing technical specifications in instant-messaging style -- even if I knew it would boost understanding. My current "freedom limit" here is Richard Lanham's idea to replace "official style" with everyday though grammatically valid "business prose".

The grace and beauty of TOC

Guys from the Design Observer blog have published a small book, The Next Page: Thirty Tables of Contents. It features Table of Contents (TOC) pages from 30 different publications that range from poetry and fiction to non-fiction prose of all kinds. Meeting so much different TOC styles, designs, and structures gathered in one place was fun. The collection inspired me to pay more attention to TOC design and, as the book's authors promised, I found the examples "engaging, the discrepancies between them even more so."

The book is now available as online slideshow at Design Observer's site. Also, these and 40 more TOC snaps are available on Flickr.

P.S. Thanks to Boris for sharing the link.

No new ideas? Here they come!

Check out a wonderfully inspiring post -- The Birth of a New Idea -- in Dan Blank's blog. Smile and creativity pepper-up guaranteed! :-)

Words and money

The two articles, 14 Words That LOSE Money and
200 Words That Make Money, are just fun to read. Also, they give two wordlists that may come in handy when occasionally composing or analyzing some marketing text.

Typical day

The mystery of who technical writers are and what they do at their workplaces in gradually unveiling. In the last few days I found several posts from writers all over the world describing a typical day at work. Well, although the descriptions are typical, they're by no means similar! See for yourself:

A writer's typical day in the USA.

A writer's typical day in China.

A writer's typical day in the UK.

A writer's typical day in Australia.

For me, it was fun to get an insight of other writer's workdays, to find evidence of how different a writer's day can be, and to see what other writers can fit into just one day.

I'll keep updating the list above as I find more posts on this topic (I'm pretty sure there'll be more). Of course, I'll also consider adding my two-pence to this stream. :-)

Agile tech writers

Yesterday I bumped into a couple of awesome posts by Sarah Maddox, a writer at Atlassian. She writes about her team of "agile technical writers" (a.k.a. XTW, or "eXtreme Technical Writers) -- that is, writers who collaborate with Agile (or eXtreme) Programmers.

Sarah generously shares the secrets of their "XTW cuisine". In particular, her description of a typical XTW day in the first post is very informative. Needa think of re-using some of their XTW tricks in my non-agile environment...