If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer, the main help (when you click on the F1 key on the screen below) is kludged because I couldn't find out how to link to a .chm file. A box will be displayed; click on the the “Open” radio button rather than the “Save” button to see the main help.

Scroll down to see the screen.

 If you are using Netscape, it is more complex. Netscape won't recognize any file types that Windows uses. Therefore, Click here, download the .chm file, and click on the Locate box to find the directory where Netscape put it on your hard drive, and, since Windows is now in control of file types, double-click on Surfsup.chm to display help. Then you have use the Back button on Netscape to go back to the screen graphic, scroll down to display the screen, and bring the window with the help file to the front to see how it would look if it were a real application. Dear Netscape, why must you ignore all Windows file types?

Explanation for help text/pdf manual/imaginary system.

Scroll down to see the screen. I discovered that some people, particularly those who access one of these pages (either the help text or the pdf manual) without going through the “introductory” page, actually believe the page they see is real (and complete) documentation for a real system. They thus draw an erroneous conclusion about the documents. So here is an explanation:
  1. Things have changed since 1980. On-demand printing is now a reality rather than a catchphrase, so the manual writer no longer needs to saddle every user with the complete 10-pound manual when one specific user needs—and wants— only 10 pages.
  2. The concept of chapters is now fully workable, so that the writer can set up as many master pages as necessary to pull together the individual chapters for individual customers.
  3. If this system were real, the user for the fake screen/user manual would have a stand-up workstation: he or she would be a cashier. This cashier would not want to use a 10-pound manual in order to look up 10 pages scattered throughout the other 500.
  4. Management, who would make the buying decision, would not want the cashier (or by extension, the public) to know that detailed customer information is being bought and/or sold.
  5. The system, if the developers were smart, would be sold in modules. The check reader, for example, may or may not be included with the cashier screen.
  6. The help text and the software (also in modules) could be set up with a user access filter, which I couldn't do. In addition, the help text, being hypertext, does not need to be isolated for each function, since the users access only the function/instructions/information in which they are interested.

Therefore, the manual contains just the information the users (cashiers) need to know in order to operate the sales screen and active function keys they see. The help text, on the other hand, contains more system-wide information, as it would in real life. The modules that the cashier would not access have the barest overview in order to show what they were intended for. These, in a real system, would be accessible only if the user sign-on contained permission to access the modules to which the explanation applies.

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