(C) 1990-1995 Stuart Cheshire <cheshire@cs.stanford.edu>
Why does Balloon Help usually look like it's written by a vegetable?
Why is it so often just a collection of asinine comments along the lines of:
"This is a button. If you click it something will happen.", or
"This is a text box. Type something in it."
If the user didn't understand the simplest basics of Macintosh user interface conventions, they'd have trouble turning Balloon Help on at all. Given that they HAVE managed to turn on Balloon Help, you can assume that they did it because they want to know something that ISN'T OBVIOUS.
Just writing the first thing that comes into your mind is a very easy mistake to make. My technique to avoid falling into this trap is that for every item of Balloon Help I write, I ask myself "Why did the user turn on Balloon Help for this item? What aspect of this program element did they feel they didn't understand from the information already available on the screen?" I think it helps a lot. Take a look at Bolo's Balloon Help and see if you think it is better or worse than the industry standard.
