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Purpose of walkthroughs

The basic aim of walkthroughs is to supplement the generic information in the IRC guide with information specific to each IRC client out there – this is because IRC clients all behave very differently from each other, and IRC is too strange for some newcomers to follow otherwise. Because the guide is aimed at complete newcomers to IRC, the walkthroughs are intended to guide people through the stages of configuring their client for the SlashNET network, and joining channels.

The walkthroughs are also intended to provide other useful information about the client, such as command equivalents, and hints and tips for usage. Because the walkthroughs are intended to follow the structure of the IRC guide itself (to what extent that is actually possible), they need not explain any technical details, but rather show how the client in question handles them.

Over time, clients get updated, and as no-one is likely to take on the role of monitoring clients for changes, anyone who find that a client has changed is free and welcome to submit new descriptive text and screenshots to match the client’s behaviour.

Notes for making submissions

New walkthroughs

• The walkthrough needs to show the client exactly as it would appear to a new user, instead of how you have customised yours, so that people do not have to worry about why everything looks different to them. You may need to re-install your client, if only temporarily, in order to get it back to its initial state, and to get to re-run the client’s own set-up system so that you can document it. On a Mac, this is best achieved by moving the client’s prefs out onto the desktop; other OSes and clients may make this more difficult.
• The walkthrough should cover the latest release of the client, as that is what a new user would download.
• Care should be taken to include enough information to guide a user through the set-up process, but not any extraneous information that will only confuse them.
• Under Mac OS X, a nice way to take screenshots of windows is to place an empty window behind them, such as:
  
  You can then capture the area surrounding the window (including the border) – images taken this way will have a nice drop shadow border to mark their outline, and a clean look, as the window on a white background will sit nicely on a walkthrough page with no distracting screen content around the window. Action shots of the program in use (such as showing a channel in use) are free to show background content on the screen, though, for realism. Just a thought. Screenshots of OS X windows do need some kind of border around them, though.
• It would be preferable if new walkthroughs follow the same style as existing ones, for consistency (it is probably easiest to rebuild an existing one to this end).

Updates

• Those taking replacement screenshots should ensure that new pictures remain identical in content to the previous pictures which they replace, as the content of the picture was quite possibly chosen on purpose, and the text of the page is likely to refer to the content of the image. However, if the client’s design has actually changed since the picture was taken, then new descriptive text should be submitted to describe how the program now behaves and how it should be used.
• For Mac OS X screenshots, see also the notes about screenshots in the above section.

Notes on images

It is preferable that all images be submitted using a format that maintains image quality – PNG is the best, and GIF is also acceptable as long as the picture looks OK in 256 colours. Otherwise, submit them as something like BMP and I’ll compress them myself. Please avoid using JPEGs, as screenshots come out looking mottled and fuzzy with this format, and if I crop the images and resave, the quality degrades even further (resaving a JPEG is like photocopying a photocopy).

Where to send submissions

Any files to be submitted (be they for complete walkthroughs or just updated text or pictures), can be submitted to me by any means you choose – by DCCing them to me, posting to a server, or just by regular e-mail – whichever you prefer.

uilleann, 17th September 2003