Online Help indexing is needed for the Online Help provided with computer software packages. This type of indexing may be done by professional indexers, by technical writers working on a project, or by a combination of these two. Even when a professional indexer is employed to create the index, maintenance might be done by other writers.
Online Help indexing is a form of embedded indexing, in which keywords and phrases that describe and give access to topics are ‘embedded’ or included within those topics. The indexer can only see the keywords in context in the index when the project is built. Any editorial changes are then made in the individual topics, and the index is built again.
Many of the issues in the selection and wording of terms are the same as in other indexing projects. It is important to standardise style as much as possible before starting a project. Issues to consider include whether to use initial capitals on index entries (most people use lower case, or use upper case for main entries and lower case for subentries) and how to deal with punctuation (initial fullstops and inverted commas should be avoided as these file before all letters; ‘PDF’ is better than ‘.PDF’). One of the most important issues is the form to be used for names of company products – it is amazing how much variation there is in these. A company style guide is useful if one exists.
There are some issues that occur only in Online Help indexing. The indexer has to learn a new program, including ways of writing index entries (for example, using a colon between main and sub entries, and making workarounds to force filing order and include See also references where required).
Online Help can be context sensitive, in which case the only information that is provided to a user is that which has been considered relevant to the user’s location within the program. (Many people would have used the F1 button to access context-sensitive help).
Each link in the index should be checked to ensure that it leads to appropriate content without ambiguity. One positive feature of Online Help indexing is that it is often possible to test the index with users and make ongoing changes to enhance the index.
Estimating the time an Online Help index will take is difficult. One rule of thumb is to allow 10 to 15% of project resources for indexing, for instance, 12 days for 300 topics (Wright, Jan. ‘How to index online’. The Indexer v. 20 n. 3 April 1997).
One feature of indexing now is the need for single sourcing, that is, writing and indexing content once, and outputting it in various formats (for example, print, HTML, Online Help, summarised). An Online Help indexer may have to take these different formats into account when indexing.
For further information on Online Help indexing, consult the following:
Hamilton, Beth. 1998. ‘Indexing Online Help’ A to Z v.2 n.1. www.stcsig.org/idx/articles/onlinehelp.pdf
Lathrop, Lori. ‘Indexing with Doc-to-Help’ July 1996. http://www.bwa.org/articles/indexing_with_doc-to-help.htm
Cone, Greg. Macromedia Developer Center. ‘Creating Online Help (Part 1): Design and development considerations’ http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/robohelp/articles/online_help.html
Maislin, Seth. September 2004. ‘What exactly is “online indexing”?...and why shouldn’t I call it that?’ http://taxonomist.tripod.com/indexing/paperless.html
Wright, Jan. 1996. ‘Working with Windows Help Keywords’ http://www.wrightinformation.com/working.pdf.
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