Workshop W3

TITLE: Taking an Object-Oriented Approach to Restructuring Legacy Documents for the Web

LEADER(s): Jonathan Price, The Communication Circle, USA

KEYWORD(s):  objects, architecture, structure, re-structuring, legacy, documents, Web, personalization, customization, conversation

CONTACT PERSON: Jonathan Price

CONTACT E-MAIL: jprice@swcp.com

ABSTRACT:

If you’ve inherited a lot of documentation that started life as paper manuals, even if the documents have moved onto CD, or into PDF, you know how ungainly, inconsistent, out of date, and poorly structured these big old documents can be. To make this information easy for users to navigate, search, and use, you need to start thinking in terms of a database full of informative objects, not a library of documents. You need to divide your material up into much smaller modular units that can be served up, individually, to users who have learned, on other sites, to pick and choose their own content. This workshop analyzes the problems users and writers encounter with a document approach to publishing on the Web, describes objects as structural elements designed to communicate (not just programming thingamajigs), and shows how this approach can transform your menus, search systems, reference material, and procedures. Along the way, you’ll see how objects make personalization possible, even in technical communication.

Topics Covered:

•  Problems with current methods of publishing on the Web
•  What are objects, rhetorically speaking?
•  How these informative objects can be reused?
•  What modularity does for your users
•  Improving searches with object attributes
•  Assembling objects on the fly for customization and personalization
•  The conversation between virtual users and the content creators
•  A brief history of markup (from Latin scrolls to XML)
•  The role of content management
•  Benefits of an object-oriented approach
•  Example: The joys of multiple menus
•  Example: One heading, many uses
•  Example: Making searches subtler and more successful with objects
•  Example: Personalizing with objects
•  Example: Exploding reference for rapid access
•  The 12-step process

Last modified October 28, 2001 by Scott Tilley.