Summary of the 1998 Conference
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
While Sydney waits to play host to the Olympics in 1998, Melbourne has just finished
its duties hosting an equally exiting event for the Help development community. The First
Annual Australasian Online Documentation Conference brought together professionals of like
interests from Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Brisbane, and Auckland, New Zealand. There were
also a number of Help experts visiting from the United States.
The three day event hosted seventy registrants and speakers at the Carlton Crest Hotel
on Queens Road. The first two days of the conference were dedicated to Online Help and
Online Documentation. Conference organisers Joe Welinske of WinWriters and Tony Self of
HyperWrite welcomed the guests. Joe described how the Internet has changed the direction
of online documentation, with Help developers waiting for a viable HTML Help solution, and
general documentation authors moving rapidly to standard HTML. Joe also provided a summary
of the latest developments in Microsoft's HTML Help initiative.
HTML Help received even deeper treatment as Scott Boggan described the pros and cons of
moving away from WinHelp and the alternatives to Microsoft's standard. A lunch buffet was
followed by three further sessions. Joe Welinske and Dave Farkas described some of the
most effective design techniques in the WinHelp area. Jean Farkas provided an introduction
to indexing for online Help as well as talking about the AnswerWorks tool. Scott Boggan
finished up the long day with a discussion of WinHelp to HTML Help conversion.
WinWriters sponsored a closing reception with drinks and nibblies where registrants and
speakers had a chance to socialise and talk shop
Day Two started off with an explanation of HTML Help site and topic navigation by Tony
Self. The next session featured Kim Parris of Microsoft. Kim is the User Education Manager
for Internet Explorer, and she described the design and implementation challenges that
came with the development of one of Microsoft's first HTML Help systems. Will Gregg, also
of Microsoft, assisted in the spirited Q&A portion of the presentation. Other Tuesday
sessions consisted of a context sensitive help case study of an HTML Help system developed
by HyperWrite. This was followed by a summary of the current status of Help authoring
tools. Finally, a number of conference registrants gathered in the hotel bar for the first
of a series of "discussions," which led the group to several local pubs.
The third and final day of the conference was devoted to HTML techniques, and
technologies of specific interest to technical writers. This included sessions on creating
look and feel consistency of content via Cascading Styles Sheets, interactivity
through Dynamic HTML, the effective use of graphics, and the practical application of
hypertext theory to Web sites. Richard Jones of RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of
Technology) also provided a very interesting presentation on the use of multimedia in a
product called Somazone. The overwhelming sentiment among participants and speakers was
that this first Australasian conference was a great success and should be continued. Plans
are already being made to stage the second annual conference in Sydney in March, 1999. We
hope to see you there!
Joe Welinske
WinWriters
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