Good point about context, I share the same experience. I will usually search but browsing, and knowing which larger area I am within when doing so, also yields results (and aids learning as opposed to problem solving).

Scott, Yeah I read that post. And for finding AN answer then chaos is fine :) Perhaps that loses us the opportunity to teach as well though? (as I said above)

Breadcrumbs only show you one branch, whereas a TOC can show all of them.

Every week for at least 2 years, I’ve bought my groceries online. Often I just type the name of the specific item I want, which is fine, but if browsing I’m still infuriated (years later) that you can only drill down specific paths, and I suppose that’s similar to the TOC-less help.

Am I too tied to the old, or is it likely to be a problem for other users? Research required…

http://4jsgroup.blogspot.com/2008/12/move-over-dita-chaos-is-coming.html

But it’s a good re-read, especially the description of how the author’s daughter found information.

Interesting post, thanks.

I like having a hard copy of a manual for simple devices, because the search-space is fairly small. But for everything else (DVD player upwards), internet search is the first port of call. So I guess it depends on the volume of information available in the hard copy, or how easily (visually?) searchable it is (poor labelling, lots of dense text, unhelpful TOC or index …) I once tried and failed to get information about the gearing in a rental car from the manual that accompanied it. You’d think that’d be pretty basic, but the index just wasn’t constructed with that in mind (presumably because the person(s) who wrote the manual had never considered that gearing might be an issue for someone who wasn’t them. The Curse Of Knowledge strikes again ;)

Of course, even internet search is only as smart as the searcher, just as the TOC/index is only as smart as the writer … ;)

Cheers,

Chris