Ray Woodcock’s Current Thoughts

I am using a computer program.  It does something weird.  I want to be able to show a technician exactly what I was doing and how the program responded.

Suppose the program is Microsoft Word.  I go to Microsoft’s website.  I find the Interactive Word Help page.  This page shows me a mock-up of a working Word installation.  I can choose layout options, and can drag and drop things on the screen, to make their Word layout look just like mine.  Then I can add a dialog box, like if you were using a Paint program and you wanted to add a rectangle; and in the dialog box I can type the text that Word is giving me.  I can save the configuration and send the URL to someone in Microsoft or elsewhere, who can then tell with one look what I’m doing wrong.

Video cameras sometimes provide the option of adding a date to the video.  This typically means that the date is constantly shown in a bottom corner of the screen.  What would be helpful, between the extremes of having the date always shown or never shown, would be to let the user designate how often and how long the date appears.  For instance, I might want to have it fade in, twice a minute, for three seconds each time, and then fade out.  Ideally, of course, I would also have font and color options.