« What the heck?! | Main | Slow »
June 28, 2004
Google and Online Help
As you know from reading my blog, I spent some time leading a workgroup defining a common approach to online help. JavaHelp 2 offers both server-side and client-side context sensitive online help with lots of trimmings.
Trouble is, I think I quite using online help when I left Windows and got Internet connectivity. At that point, I started reading web pages.
A couple of years ago, the situation got even more titled in favor of the web with the advent of Google. With Google's advanced search capabilities, even with just "I'm Feeling Lucky," it takes me less time to look up the answer to my question in some mailing list than to search through oodles of "help" somebody threw together to explain their application before anybody used it.
In that vein, I once suggested to the group that unless you can access the online help over the web, it's probably nearly worthless. I wonder how close to true that is, statistically speaking.
Posted by Mark at June 28, 2004 09:20 PM