This web site: A "Tips and Techniques" knowledge-base
How this site is written and why
Last modified: 10/1/98
This web site is a form of "how-to" and "why" living document. It is a type of knowledge-base.

Business uses of this type of document include:
•   Tips and techniques: doing sales calls, making best use of our product
•   Survival Guides: Everything they forgot to teach you in orientation about...
•   Corporate Folklore: Clues to dealing with our major account, including history

Less appropriate would be policies and procedures, which need more step-by-step, ordered material. The style described here is more a hetrogeneous, informal mix of material than those documents require.

Goals of the design and how they were met:

Goals of the design: Work as an accessable, constantly updated bunch of knowledge

Start a "guided tour" of the document

The individual stops on the tour: Home Page   |   News page   |   Detail pages   |   Typography   |   Use of lists   |   Use of tours

Comments:

Comments we've received about this design are mainly in the Mail section of this site, since it is also the entire site, not just a sample.

You can read a usability report. It is the result of having eight individuals try out the Good Documents web site with a video camera running. The report is about the site as it was in April 1998.

Alternative designs:
None yet.

How the sample was created:
This entire site was originally created using Trellix 1.0, and later converted to Trellix 2.0. The few exceptions are noted (initially, just parts of the map examples, which are Trellix with a bit of hand-coded HTML). Each major section (Techniques, Samples, Philosophy, etc.) was created as a separate document and exported to HTML in its own directory. Exporting was done with no map, and "short title" for file names. Most of the material was written by Dan on his laptop. Updates are done as edits to the original Trellix documents. Microsoft FrontPage is used to move the files to the main server and to check for bad links.

Trellix 2.0 is a program designed for creating business documents like those discussed here. For more information about Trellix 2.0, see the Trellix web site, www.trellix.com.