To create a tutorial you will need an account somewhere like photobucket.com where you can link screengrabs, you will also need to be familiar on how to create useful and effective screengrabs and finally you will need to break the process of whatever you are writing a tutorial about down to logical and easy steps.
Let us become familiar first with creating a screen grab.
1. Screengrabs
You can take a screengrab at any time on your computer by pressing the "Print Screen" key (See fig 1 below)
fig 1
When you press this you may think that nothing has happened, certainly nothing changes on the screen but in fact an image of your entire screen has been pasted to the "Clipboard" buffer in memory, now you need to create an image file with that so you need to open up your graphics package, this could be Paint, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro or the free GIMP, for the purposes of this tutorial I will be using Paint Shop Pro but the same facilities exist in all the packages mentioned.
Once you have opened your graphics package go to the edit menu and click "Paste as new image". (See fig 2 below) (fig 3 shows the fullscreen "Reduced in size for this tutorial")
fig 2
fig 3
This will produce a full screen sized image of your entire screen, of course this is going to be too big and it may contain information that you don't necessarily want the public to know such as if you have messenger open with conversations displayed for all to see, so the next step is to "Crop" the image to one that will concentrate on what it is you want to show. To "Crop" this down you need to select the "crop" tool (fig 4)
fig 4
Then you left click where you want the top left corner of your image to begin and keeping the left mouse button clicked drag down (top left to bottom right) a rectangulsr area on your full screen graphic that encapsulates the entire area you want to show (See fig 5)
fig 5
You will notice that the selected area rectange has "Resize" boxes, these you can pull (Left click your mouse on any of these and keep the left mouse button clicked dragging the box) to fit your cropping needs and when you are happy that the selected area is OK you simply double click anywhere inside the selected area for the "crop" to be made.
If you make a mistake whilst cropping simply go to the "Edit" menu and select "Undo crop" (Should be at the top of the Edit menu).
Now you have your handy sized graphic depicting whatever it is you want to show, save it as a jpg file somewhere on your harddrive where you will easily find it again (Generally naming it something that corresponds to its place in your tutorial like fig 1 or demo 1 etc...).
The next step is to get your graphic hosted somewhere like photobucket, thhis is a simple step, if you already haven't done so open a new account and their upload procedures are reasonably straight forward , just follow their instructions.
2. Make everything clear
OK we know how to create screengrabs and host them but unless you make it clear what the reader is supposed to be looking for all your hard work is for nothing.
Graphics
When creating your graphics always try to highlight what icon, button or menu item it is you are talking about, remember that someone completely new to the software, you are writing the tutorial for, is not going to be as familiar with the layout as you are and so you need to show which icon you are using (Usually I put an arrow pointing to it) also make sure that you give the reader some perspective of where that icon can be found by including in your screengrab other icons and buttons that are around it.
Generally speaking these image hosting companies provide you with a variety of linking options as shown in fig 6 (Taken from photobucket.com)
fig 6
For forums like this one use the bottom link option.
For HTML pages use the middle link option.
And for a straight link to the image use the top link option.
OK, I understand that this approach may seem a little patronising to those who may be more familiar with the software but always write a tutorial aimed at your audience with a view to the newcomer. It still amazes me how many tutorials are written assuming that those reading the tutorial are completely familiar and comfortable with using the software (If they were that familiar with the software they wouldn't need your tutorial).
Concept
Lay out in the simplest terms what your tutorial aims to achieve, this is an important preamble to writing up the various stages in the process you are trying to teach. That may seem like common sense but as you wind through the various processes to achieve the finished goal you can easily lose yourself on sidetracking and so completely lose your audience.
Break the process down to its most basic element procedures, too many tutorials skip through stuff that the writer assumes everybody is familiar with and this can sometimes cause confusion for the reader and lose an audience who are left wondering how they get from stage A to stage F when B,C,D and E have been left out (My biggest gripe is with those tutorial writers who like to show lots of screengrabs of dialogue boxes and yet fail to explain fully what was clicked on the previous dialogue box to get to the current one).
Make sure you do not miss anything out from that chain of procedures.
Delivery
This is perhaps the part in which you need to pay the closest attention, keep the language simple, pay close attention to punctuation and add textual formatting to emphasise important steps.
Do not create enormous blocks of text, paragraphs should be short and to the point, a paragraph with more than 6 lines is generally hard to follow onscreen, make sure that your paragraphs stay below a 6 line threshold.
If you need to add numbered lists of procedures or anything else always have a line break in between each numbered item.
Always make anything you think important "Bold" to stand out fro the rest of the text.
When you add comments always use italics (Then everyone knows that these are additional to the main tutorial information)
3. Pay attention to feedback
The best test of a tutorial is the feedback you get from its readers, if you seem to get a lot of feedback asking you to explain certain aspects of a procedure go back to the tutorial and edit it including the new explanations.
Be ever critical of your own tutorial, if you feel you could have explained something simpler go back in and edit it.
Always remember that the only reason for a person to read a tutorial is for them to learn, never take criticisms personally.
Happy tutorial writing
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