I think, chunking is definitely a good idea. I also like the idea of seeing a TOC list the sub topics in a topic. A main heading and a hyperlinked list under it that tells you what you can find in the section. So, by default, it also tells you what you will not find here – that is the one time when I feel my time has been completely wasted – when I’ve read a whole topic and discovered that it doesn’t contain the information I was looking for.

I go for searches as well. Most people do, I suppose. But searches become complicated in scenarios when you think of something as A, but the people who wrote the help decided to label it B. A TOC/list can solve this problem since most people will recognize what they are looking for when they see it spelt out there.

TOCs, other than listing what a topic covers, also give a form and flow to the main topic, giving the users an idea of what follows what.

But sometimes, like Gordon pointed out, we just want quick information about something – and that’s when I feel we need both TOCs and alphabetical indexes!

A TOC that runs long can be a problem of course, but not a bigger problem than not knowing what he topic covers. For larger topics that contain many sub-topics, this is all the more important.

They use lots of Drop-down text links or bookmark links…”In this section…x, y , z.”

When you look at this example, it works for ‘Insert headers and footers’ because this is covering the different subtle variants of ‘inserting headers and footers’ that users might want to achieve.

PS. I prefer a See Also link at the bottom of a topic to achieve the same effect, except that links are not displayed in menu but is simply a section of a topic that explicitly displays all the related topics for the user to choose.

It is very important to me that this list appears ‘above the fold’ to steal a newspaper term – at least the heading and some of the tasks should show in the default help window without scrolling, as an important clue.

If you put in an intro para (or picture) preceding the task list that bumps that task list out of the default window, a user might never scroll and see the task list. The previous version of Word help that I have has no graphic, and Joe Friday’s (Just the facts ma’am) the task list in line 1 of the Help.

After that, In my opinion, how big or small your topic chunks are depends upon how well your help (and the tool that built it) handles bookmarks, and whether you have a Back button or breadcrumbs as navigation aids. If you make little chunks and then strand your users at them, any click that takes them to a topic other than the one that exactly answers their question becomes a negative.

Like Gordon, though, I don’t use the TOC, which is just one person’s way of organizing the material in the Help file. I typically use Search first.

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The approach taken by Microsoft isn’t bad though, but perhaps it makes the user work a little too hard to get to the information. If I’m using online help, gimme the answer to my question quickly and let me get back to work. With that in mind, I’ve have the mini-TOC right at the top of the page (thus acting as a reasonable Landing Point for users to get them to the info they need ASAP)

As for huge big TOCs… how many people actually use them? *I* always head to the search first, and it’s only after that the TOC becomes a little more useful in displaying my location in the help system.

Perhaps we should do away with the TOC completely. After all it’s a remnant of the book era and may no longer be applicable in the world of online user assistance.

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