One problem that i've personally experienced and seen around me in my previous job is that if you leave developers to write their own docs, they might end up being extremely focused on their own "pet features" and neglect the oher parts that they're not so keen on. Unfortunately, from the user's point of view, what the developer thinks is The Best Thing Ever might be just ho-hum for the user. And vice versa. So its great to hear that Apple has a seperate docs group now.
I guess my earlier comment on the sparse manual of Interface Builder should be rethought. Even if Apple does produce a really good manual for Interface Builder, how many amongst us would read it? I'm the type that likes to read manuals, but I know many of my fellow developers that i've worked with in the past don't. Manual readers seem to be the exception, and not the norm.
Perhaps Apple should start learning from the bloggers and podcasters and produce screencasts for their products. Imagine a WebKit podcast where the developers behind it will explain to you how to say.. implement download behaviour. Or perhaps an Interface Builder podcast showing you this exact tip that is mentioned in this article. All in video with commentary of course.
But text documentation must still be kept actively maintained, these videos should be though of as the potatoes with the text documentation as the meat.
by Joe Goh — Jan 08
I guess my earlier comment on the sparse manual of Interface Builder should be rethought. Even if Apple does produce a really good manual for Interface Builder, how many amongst us would read it? I'm the type that likes to read manuals, but I know many of my fellow developers that i've worked with in the past don't. Manual readers seem to be the exception, and not the norm.
Perhaps Apple should start learning from the bloggers and podcasters and produce screencasts for their products. Imagine a WebKit podcast where the developers behind it will explain to you how to say.. implement download behaviour. Or perhaps an Interface Builder podcast showing you this exact tip that is mentioned in this article. All in video with commentary of course.
But text documentation must still be kept actively maintained, these videos should be though of as the potatoes with the text documentation as the meat.