Please don't use screenshots in on-screen help

[Brian Burger]

On 3/28/06, Daniel Robitaille <robitaille at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/27/06, Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > On Mar 25, 2006, at 5:29 AM, Henrik Nilsen Omma wrote:
> > > ...
> > > I know some of you are taking (or planning to take) screen shots for
> > > various guides.
> > > ...
> >
> > If any of you think this is a good idea, watch this video:
> > <http://betterdesktop.ximian.com/video/changedesktopbackground/
> > Subject10.mpeg>
> >
> > Please avoid using screenshots in documents that are intended for
> > screen use. When you must use them, crop them to the relevant part of
> > the interface, give them faded edges, and shrink them to 75% or so, so
> > they don't look like the actual interface. Thanks.
>

You know, I've never considered that people would mistake screenshots in
help files for the actual interface...

Short summary, for those who don't/can't want to pull down 166.4Mb
 of video file:
User is asked to change the desktop background on Gnome, finds the
help files after a minute or two, then proceeds to mistake the
screenshots that the Help file is lavishly illustrated with for the
interface...

I noticed that the user also didn't seem to be actually reading the text
that accompanied the screenshots...

(Was there supposed to be a soundtrack on this file? Totem-xine in Breezy
wasn't making any noise for me...)

/me reconsiders bothering with screenshots for the Ubuntu Desktop Guide...

Brian.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-doc/attachments/20060328/c3c897f9/attachment.html>