We use the metaphor of a filing cabinet or bookshelf for our documentation, but sometimes, it feels more like a closet. With every release, we add more new things, pushing the older things to the back. Especially for mature products with a long documentation history, it can feel like an overstuffed closet, filled with things we never use, but are nevertheless reluctant to throw away.
There are the special occasion outfits -- elegant clothes meant to impress a single audience with the perfect look. There are the outfits that were part of a style trend, and now appear dated and out of fashion. There are the separates that looked so good you had to buy them, only to discover they couldn't be worn with anything else you owned.
How much of our documentation appeals to only a single limited audience? Would it be easier for people to find more commonly used information if this special occasion information didn't clutter up their search results? Thank goodness we didn't fall prey to the trend of using Flash for every introduction page, which would have been like having a closet full of top-stitched polyester leisure suits, but there are some other trends that influenced particular documentation. And we incorporated information from other sources into our documentation, whose style and content don't quite match the rest of it.
The Domino Designer documentation closet is overdue for a good cleaning, and we're taking the opportunity of switching to the Eclipse platform to give everything in it a good, hard look. Do we love it? Do we use it? Do we need it?
We don't plan on throwing anything away. But like a closet cleaning, where you give things you're not using to friends and charities that will, we'll consider repositioning information, taking it out of one set of documentation and putting it somewhere else so that it's easier to exclude from searches, or including links to information maintained by others rather than duplicating that information.
Best of all, like a freshly cleaned closet, once all of our documentation has been migrated into Eclipse, everything will be visible and easy to find. There will be plenty of room for new things. And you may discover treasures you never knew were in there!
Jennifer Dunne | 4 March 2008 10:30:00 AM ET | | Comments (0)
