The 2011 WritersUA Skills and Technologies Survey Skills • Technologies • Platforms • Survey Home The use of technologies is a defining element in the identity of software user assistance professionals. Enhancing a product's usability requires transforming our words and ideas into digital form using a variety of technologies. In our survey we provided a list of popular user assistance technologies and asked the respondents to value the importance of those technologies in their current development efforts. The technologies we presented to the survey respondents are broad solution technologies as opposed to specific file formats. For example, Microsoft's HTML Help provides a comprehensive solution to user assistance in the Windows environment, while HTML is a technology that gains value only when used in conjunction with a broader technology like HTML Help or browser-based Help. Our work with foundation technologies like HTML, XML, and JavaScript are dealt with specifically in the Skills section of the survey. The figure below shows the top-rated user assistance technologies. These technologies are rated as either "4" (Very Valuable) or "5" (Invaluable), the top two ratings on a five-point scale. Support for manuals in the form of PDF (81%) is at the top of the list as the most valued technology component. Using PDF as a delivery format has become a staple in our documentation sets. PDF files can be delivered on an installation CD or via the Web. In the past, this technology was mainly used for legacy print documents like user guides, and also for supplemental white papers and troubleshooting information. Today we find many organizations using PDF files as the primary distribution format for product documentation. The use of browser-based Help (80%) continues to be very popular with our respondents placing it second. The lure of displaying content in a web browser window seems to offer enough positive value for us to favor it over more feature-rich, platform-specific proprietary Help systems. This form of content delivery uses standard and non-standard Web technologies to deliver Help content through Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and other browsers. Implementation strategies run the gamut from using basic HTML pages to proprietary solutions, such as WebHelp and WebWorks Help, to complex renderings employing custom JavaScript and HTML5/CSS. The World Wide Web (67%) continues to be a key element of our user assistance as evidenced by the strong showing in the survey. This includes content that is distributed through the public Internet and private intranets. Until recently, the Web was primarily used as a supplement to online Help and printed manuals. As we move increasingly toward Web-based applications and ubiquitous broadband Internet connections, server-side deployment of user assistance via the Web is becoming a hot topic in many tech pubs departments. So the Web is filling more than one role. Traditional documentation components such as quick reference materials (62%) and knowledge-bases (55%) are still valued highly by over half of respondents. Other documentation formats like paper-based manuals (31%) and Microsoft HTML Help (40%) have significantly dropped in popularity. Also growing in importance are collaborative technologies like discussion Forums (36%) and Wikis (30%). These two items have increased significantly over the past several years. Detailed Results Here is the complete list of skills presented in the survey. They are separate into functional groups. The percentages are of responses rating a technology as "Very Valuable" or "Invaluable". Microsoft Help Systems Table System Response Percent HTML Help 1.x (.chm) 40% WinHelp (.hlp) 9% Help 2.x for Visual Studio (.hxs) 5% Help Viewer 1.0 for Visual Studio (.mshc) 3% Other Help Systems Table System Response Percent Browser-based Help (WebHelp or any HTML/XML-based Help content displayed in a browser) 80% Eclipse Help 13% JavaHelp 9% Oracle Help for Web 4% Apple Help 4% Oracle Help for Java 2% Manuals (User, Admin, Installation, or Reference Guides) Table Manual Response Percent PDF manuals 81% Print (distributed on paper) 31% XPS, Epub, Mobi, Kindle 7% Other Delivery Technologies Table Technology Response Percent World Wide Web or intranet content 67% Quick reference (Reference cards, Getting Started guides, release notes, job aids) 62% Knowledge bases (web-based repositories for reference information) 55% Multimedia tutorials (Video, Flash, simulations) 48% Forums (discussion groups, blogs, Twitter) 36% Interactive helpers (wizards, troubleshooters) 31% Wikis 30% RSS feeds 17% Other delivery technologies mentioned by respondents: Adobe AIR, blogs, Facebook, readme-text files, Twitter, MS Word documents, Siebel iHelp, FAR Uncompressed Help, DocCommentXchange, Apache Lucene. A number of respondents mentioned specific tools. We keep tools in a separate Tools Survey. A number of respondents mentioned HTML as a form of "Manuals". HTML documents are covered by "Browser-based Help" in the "Other Help Systems" category. Possibly there should be an additional category for HTML/XML transformations that resemble traditional manuals. Copyright © 2011 WritersUA. All Rights Reserved. shannonm *at* writersua *dot* com	Loading WritersUA offers cutting-edge training and information to Technical Writers, Information Analysts and Architects, Documentation Designers, Help Authors, Publication Managers, Documentation Leads, Senior Writers and Documentation Contractors, and User Education Specialists. The focus is on software user assistance, which encompasses writing, editing, planning, coding, indexing, testing, programming, localization, and standards development.