Doc Box Consulting

Technical Writing Services in North Carolina

Kim Nylander — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 02:50:10 +0000

Based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, Doc Box Consulting offers freelance technical writing services and web site development and maintenance at a reasonable cost. Technical writing is about translating complex concepts into plain English, at a level appropriate for the target audience. With over 10 years experience as a technical writer, Kim Nylander, the primary writer for Doc Box Consulting, can help you create materials best suited to your project.

Want to learn more about how Doc Box Consulting can create a top-notch content solution for your project? Contact Doc Box Consulting.

Links for learning Cascading Style Sheets

Kim Nylander — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 18:54:56 +0000

A friend of mine asked for tutorials and resources for cascading style sheets (CSS), so I complied the following list of sites. The most comprehensive place to start is by reviewing the CSS specification (current version is 2.1). The spec is published and maintained by the World Wide Web Consorium (W3C), which also a tutorial on CSS.

W3Schools is a good site with excellent tutorials for HTML, CSS, XHTML, among others. I learned HTML/CSS there — and then had to unlearn some things. W3Schools is geared towards coding towards Internet Explorer, which doesn’t necessarily match the actual W3C specs.

An easy way to play with CSS is to start with standards-compliant templates that work in a wide range of browsers.

Two column templates
Three column “holy grail” template
Examples and templates, plus some good info on the box-model hack (thanks IE)
Box Lesson for easy to use templates
Layout Reservoir from Blue Robot

Get a good CSS editor like TopStyle from Bradsoft (http://topstyle4.com) that has a list of selectors as drop-down boxes — that way you don’t have to memorize things. There used to be a freeware version, TopStyle Lite, that provides a good starting point.

Western Civ, creators of Style Master CSS editor, has an excellent tutorial for CSS.

A List Apart is probably the best place to find information on best design practices and how to work around common problems. Cutting edge stuff by some of the best in the industry.

Eric Meyer’s home page has a great set of links for CSS references and related items.

Want to see what CSS can really do? Take a look at CSS Zengarden and CSS Vault. Some excellent examples of how CSS can completely change the appearance of a page by swapping the CSS without touching the page’s code.

CSS Layout for Fun and Profit (glish.com) also has great articles and information.

Once you have a CSS sheet created, it should be validated against the spec (this is also a great troubleshooting tool) by using the W3C CSS Validator.

If you really can’t find something, chances are that “Holy CSS, Zeldman!” has a link to it.

Suggestions for new technical writers

Kim Nylander — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 16:30:23 +0000

Interested in learning about technical writing or getting started in the field? The set of links below were put together when a friend asked me for information on technical writing.

My bookmarks on Delicious for tech writing
The motherload of all TW mailing lists: TechW-L. Great articles, resources, and mailing list archives. The membership includes several thousand tech writers world wide.
Online text book for tech writing
Fundamentals of Document Design by BA Stoky Design
Monster.com’s Guide to careers in tech writing
DocSymmetry’s info on being a tech writer
Myths about tech writing
Webster Tech Writing (see the field guide to tech writing)
User Guide Tutorial from Klariti

To get ideas for manual layout and structure, take a look at some of the available free templates for Open Office Writer and Microsoft Word. For Word, check out Microsoft’s Office template pages. The exact URL will differ depending upon the version of Office you have installed.

Creating unique headers and footers in Writer

Kim Nylander — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:31:52 +0000

You create unique headers and footers in one document in Open Office Writer (Writer) by using the page styles available in Writer. Page styles in Writer are like creating master pages in InDesign: page features (text, graphics, etc.) are stored in the style. When a page style is active on a page, the style name is highlighted in the Page Styles pane of the Styles and Formatting palette.

Header and footer text associated with a particular style is entered on a page tagged with that style.

The procedure below describes how to create new page styles, apply the page styles, and then modify the headers and footers associated with each page style. You can also use this procedure with existing page styles by starting after after the first section.

Creating New Page Styles

Open or create a multi-page document.
Tip: To add new pages, use the Manual Break option from the Insert menu. By using this method, you can also change the page number and choose the style for the new page.

Choose Format > Styles and Formatting to display the Styles and Formatting palette.
Click the fourth icon in the palette’s toolbar to display the Page Styles palette. You will use this palette to create, modify, and remove pages styles from this document.

Place your cursor on the first page of the document.
In the Page Styles palette, right-click in the dialog and choose New… from the pop-up menu.

On the Page Style dialog, choose the options for the page style and save changes by pressing OK. On the Header and Footer tab, make sure the options are turned on. (Text for the headers and footers is not entered in this dialog.)
Tip: You may or may not want headers or footers active on the first page of a document.
Repeat the above steps for however many pages styles your document requires.

Adjusting Page Style Flow: Next Style

Let’s say that you want to automatically have these running headers appear on left- and right-facing pages (except for the title page):

The left-facing page header (defined in the Left Page style) will have the document title and
The right-facing page header (defined in the Right Page style) will display the page number.

Open Office Writer lets you define the next style that follows a particular style. In this example, the Left Page style would be modified using the Page Style dialog so the Right Page style is chosen as the Next Style.

The Right Page style would also have to be changed so the Next Style drop-down box has Left Page chosen.

Applying Page Styles

With your cursor on your first page, double-click on the name of the style you would like to apply to the first page.
If the style has a header turned on, enter content in the header. Once you set a page style on one page, OOWriter automatically applies that same page to each subsequent page that does not have a style assigned.
Go to the next page in the document. Place your cursor on the page test. On the Page Styles palette, double-click the name of the next page style you wish to use.
If headers are turned on, the header at the top of the page will be blank. Enter a new header for this page and possibly the next if you are using left-right facing pages with different header/footer content.
Check the pages in the document. Later pages in the document should have the second page style you created. The first page should still contain the first page header contents. If it does not, return to the Page Styles palette and double-click the name of the first page style you created. The header content will reappear.

You should now be able to place your cursor on a page and apply any of the pages styles to individual pages.

These instructions were written using Open Office Writer 2.3 in X-Windows on the Mac. The steps were also checked in OOWriter 2.4 for Microsoft Windows.

Additional Resources

Trouble? Suggestions?

If you have any trouble with this tutorial, please leave a comment. I’m happy to update the document.

Edit on October 10, 2008. Updates from comments found on the Open Office Writer forums.