Manual updates

[Moon Wizard]

OK, so I've been swinging back and forth on different manual platforms over the last year, with no clear winner. So, I decided to go with the easiest option for us to manage (Google Sites), and make the best of it.

The current manuals are written using XML/XSL, so they are not conducive to sharing. Also, the current layout prevents programs from Adobe Acrobat from creating PDF files.

Here is a preview of the new layout for the manual sites.
https://sites.google.com/a/smitework...-guide-basics/

My idea is that by placing it on a collaborative site, I can invite interested community members to update the existing sites with more information. Also, I can allow other ruleset creators (via FG or community) to create their manuals online, and I can easily link to the main web site.

Right now, I've only migrated the launcher portion of the manual as a test of the layout and formatting.

What do you think so far? Any issues you can think of?

Regards,
JPG

[wbcreighton]

First issue:

I get this error:

The ‘Insufficient Privileges’ error message in Google Sites often means there’s an item embedded on the page that you don’t have permission to view.

[Zeus]

I had the same issue however my access is now working. Try again wbcreighton.

[wbcreighton]

Thanks

[Zeus]

I like it moon. Nice and clean.

Once comment: the screenshots, which are intended as a visual reference, are a little too small for me, causing the text to be illegible. I know you can click the image for a full size version however you then lose visibility of the manual text. This causes lots of clicking between manual pages and inserted screenshots.

Instead of a side by side format of screenshots with manual text, it maybe better to go with a top down approach; this should allow for a slightly larger view of the screenshots and will hopefully negate the need to enlarge the image.

This should also ease any conversion to PDF and the flow of the document elements.

[Moon Wizard]

I found that the larger screenshots actually took up a fair amount of real estate on the screen as well, so you would end up scrolling between image and step-by-step.

The main questions are whether legible text is a requirement for the images on the top page, and whether drill-down vs. scrolling is preferred.

Regards,
JPG

[Callum]

I think this is a great idea, and I look forward to being able to contribute!

To my mind, the screenshots definitely need to be larger. Even on my laptop (at 1280 x 800), there was plenty of room for larger images, and the current ones are just too small to be seen clearly. I'd increase the size of the screenshots next to the text by 50% in each direction, and those that you get when you click on them by 100%.

The current navigation system seems to work fine.

In Firefox, the numbers in the lists of instructions aren't centred in the text boxes - they're all sitting low, hanging over the bottom edge of the box (this doesn't happen in Chrome or IE9). These numbers are also rather large, meaning even a single line of text takes up a lot of space - could they be reduced in size a bit?

[Dakadin]

You might not need to change the size of the screenshots if you added the numbers to the screenshots. For example, step #1 for Load Campaign says Click "Load Campaign". If there was a small #1 with a similar style on Load Campaign button that might work instead.

[Moon Wizard]

The big images for the screenshots are 50% of the original screenshots to save space. These are the images used in the current manual. I'm open to using full size images. I just need to check to see if there are any space limitations.

The small images for the screenshots are actually controlled by a built-in widget, and that size is the largest size available without going full size. I'm not in love with the widget though. I might be able to bring in a light box similar to current manual with some work.

My main concern is making sure that it is easy to build, which means that I don't want to have anyone have to maintain multiple sizes of same file. Any HTML gurus have suggestions?

Cheers,
JPG

[Moon Wizard]

I just redid the graphic on this page. What do you think?
https://sites.google.com/a/smitework.../load-campaign

* I used a full scale graphic, and had it resize to fit box with a link to full version. My only concern is that the full graphic has to load for each page that has a screenshot, but they are about 180K as JPGs, so not bad.
* Also, I shrunk the step by step graphics by 25%.

Cheers,
JPG