Hi all
I couldn't agree more that a really good index is what's
needed. Those that have been here a long time will probably groan
when I tell this story again.
I once constructed a very large WinHelp system. (250+
interrelated .HLP files). This system had a pretty decent index and
folks were well accustomed to it. Largely because of my constant
evangelization of using the Index and being ultra receptive and
responsive to suggestions for keywords.
Enter the world of the web.
Because of the popularity of the system, I was, ummm, how to
say this. "Strongly encouraged" by our LAN department to convert
this to HTML and place it on the company intranet. (the LAN guys
were sick to death of creating special drive mappings to every Tom,
Dick and Harry that saw my system and wanted access to it)
To make a long story longer, WebHelp wasn't mature yet. I
used FrontPage and framesets galore to mimic the WinHelp system.
But it lacked an Index. One thing led to another and I was forced
out due to political wind shifts. I eventually quit and moved to a
different company. Then I was asked back. What I was told was that
people "wanted the search/wanted the search/wanted the search"
(chanting ad nauseum)
Soooo, I brought back that wonderful
Index. BUT, what I did was use smoke and mirrors on them. I
modified my WebHelp skin so Search wasn't even an option. I didn't
include any means of searching whatsoever. What I
DID do was to replace my
Index image with the image used for
Search.
Bottom line was all they had was the Index I provided. What
they
thought they received was "The Search". Users were
happy/PHBs were happy/I was happy.
Cheers... Rick