Simpler end user manual request

[John Dillon]

My request is for the creation of a manaual or set of tutorials for real end users not developers. The users who use this editor are often real non technical people who have no understanding whatsoever of HTM or the web, they can just about use word. These users consistently find using the RadEditor for anything other than basic text editing difficult because of the concepts involved. As an example the concept of applying classes is one they find very difficult but with some basic knowledge the soon get the hang of it (like styles in word).
I realise this is a difficult thing todo because of the many ways the editor can be configured but I personally would be so happy if you achieved this so I didnt have to spend any more of my time training users on how to do basic CMS.

Thanks
John

p.s. I have provided them all with RadEditorAjaxEndUserManual.pdf but they find it too difficult to understand.

[Rumen]

Hi John,

Thank you for your request. We have used the helps for editors like MS Word as a base to create the End-User manual for RadEditor.

Do you have any concrete feedback for editor's features and tools that are not clear for your users and they are not able to understand how these tools work? Could you please send us a list of the features that are problematic for the end users and need to be explained in more details? We will definitely use your end-users' feedback to improve the documentation.

Sincerely,
Rumen
the Telerik team

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[John Dillon]

Sorry but its very difficult for me to me specific here because there are so many examples. Lets take one of the first sections users might come to from the index... 4. System modules.

 

4.1 Tag Inspector

This module displays the path of the selected item (i.e. the DOM path of the current element). It also allows you to select the last (innermost) tag in the hierarchy and remove it using the

[Remove Element] button.

This is not going to make any sense to someone who doesnt understand HTML and this is my point (whats a tag? whats DOM? etc...). To me the document is written for someone who understands HTML, the web etc... My users dont understand HTML in any shape or form so talking about tags, classes, properties etc... doesnt make any sense if you dont first explain what all of these things are and how they relate to elements in a content area and the editor.
I guess I'm talking about a "Dummies guide to the RadEditor....."

Have you tested this on users with absolutely no understanding of HTML and the web and got them to perform some CMS tasks using only the manual as reference? I think you would find this a useful exercise.

Thanks
John

[Tervel]

Hello John,

Thank you for the additional information.
You are correct that the explanation about the said module is quite technical. On the other hand, it is only normal that a powerful, multifunctional tool cannot be absolutely naturally intuitive. You will probably agree that users new to computers have extremely hard time to grasp even the most basic of concepts about Operating Systems. People new to word processing, such as MS Office need to go to courses or read the documentation to go beyond the basic "Bold, Italic, Underline". People new to Internet browsing find a great deal of unfamiliar concepts.

Hence, on one hand - the huge majority of us who have been using all these technologies for many years now seem to regard this knowledge as the most natural thing - which can sometimes lead to being too technical for non-technical users (like perhaps in this case). On the other hand, a web-based text processing editor's advanced capabilities would not be naturally intuitive to novice users - just like any new technology.

We will review our end-user manual documentation and do our best to provide more novice-friendly descriptions for the more advanced topics. I agree with you that this is one example of text that could have been explained with less technicalities.


Sincerely yours,
Tervel
the Telerik team

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