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M
MaleHealthScotland
Participant
May 29, 2009
Question

Training Users

  • May 29, 2009
  • 1 reply
  • 931 views

Hi,

I have a question. I am new to CF. From my own learning I have begun now to piece together some basic applications (mail forms, CMS, CRUD, secure login, all very basic stuff) only for the purpose of learning the building blocks of CF. I know there are great stock CF applications but they are way to advanced for me to learn the language from just now.

I was building a MySQL based CMS for fun. When I go to the page where I want users to enter their own pages I started to get worried about something. I would need to show people how to use my application if it was a real world one. I have put in TinyMCE as my editor to try to make it easier, but even still they would need some training. Even on my basic rubbish apps I would have to document them for others to get it. What happens then in real world massive applications!

I mean my applications are newbie rubbish right now. But it just got me thinking I don't really like the idea of training people to use my applications or in fact documenting them at all. Does CF not have an auto document tag?

So how do you deal with training users and documenting code & help files as a developer in the real world? Do people do this as a job - called documenters or something? Do you pay them to do it?

As a solo learner yeah I can throw it away right now. But if I ever get a CF job I am going to have to face this one day. Of course it is not hard, that is not my gripe, but the point is it takes time away from my development time. I had another thought - what if you even want to localise your applications! Cold sweats 😛 this seems not a nice feature of getting into programming.

Oh dear, I never considered this when I opened up that CF Book. It sounds a really horrid part of working with any programming language.

I was just wondering if anyone had any tips on this aspect of development? It must me a nightmare for solo developers or small teams.

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

C
craigkaminsky
Inspiring
May 29, 2009

Hi, Scott,

Documenting certainly isn't fun and there is no auto-documentation program that I know of. I try to create my written docs as I go with a combo of good code comments (helps me remember what the ^%#* I was thinking when I wrote the code ) and notes about application features in a text editor. From there, it is a bit painful to generate official documentation. And by painful, I just mean timing- and work-wise.

For help systems, I've moved toward using visual content with Adobe Captivate or Screenflow (Captivate is still PC only and I'm solely on a Mac now, hence the inclusion of Screenflow). These applications allow me to record what I do on screen, say using a part of a CMS application I built, and offer the resulting movie files up as video tutorials/help files on the system. I realized that no matter how well I wrote documentation, people just don't read today! Watching it has proved more helpful for my clients/users.

Good luck!

Craig

M
MaleHealthScotlandAuthor
Participant
May 29, 2009

So it hurts everyone?

Thank you for the tip on creating videos. I guess you mean like the lynda.com style videos? Making tutorials for users.

Yeah your right people never read now! This is a great idea to make vids up. I am a mac user also. I will have to look up your mac solution. I guess you also try to make your applications work like all the others they might have used also.

I just can't get over the hang up of time on documenting. Yet I know it is essential.

Last question...who pays for the time you spend documenting?

Imagine paying me to write about my code when I could be writing more code...seems dumb to me such a waste of time. But on the users side I guess they could never use our work unless we showed them how.

Thanks for the great answer!

C
craigkaminsky
Inspiring
May 29, 2009

You are most welcome!

I certainly don't want to speak for others but it hurts me to write up docs ! I tend to work in one of two ways: (1) with a design ageny where I do development and they do front-end UIs or (2) all by my lonesome.

In both cases, we budget for documentation in our proposals, this way the documenter's time is covered. Case 1, working with an agency, is nice b/c we have people to do that; rather than me! Regardless, I much prefer the video route now...SO much easier IMHO!

One thing to keep in mind as you continue down the CF-dev path, do document your code (i.e., comment it out). It's helpful for both you and any other developers coming in behind you as code evolves (this is, of course, a different type of documentation!).

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