Interactive documentation – a unique type of documentation that widely uses different kinds of media content. To be more sophisticated, this type of documentation gathers all digital documents, which are created with an addition of a great amount of interactive content (visual web links, videos, audio files). In this document type, text performs only as a small basis of the entire structure.
The current level of technology allows using new types of written information that may be accompanied by a great variety of different content. This technique is under the responsibility of interactive documentation. Now let’s examine the purpose of interactive documentation and some popular tools to create it.
The Main Purpose of the Interactive Documentation
As interactive documentation may be considered the area of technical writing, it is possible to say that its main goal is to provide a properly structured document but with an addition, that it should contain a lot of parts of digital content.
This digital content is necessary to make the document more useful and make it perform as a basis for many sorts of information that may be reached thanks to the additional interactive material. So, the main purpose of the interactive documentation is to make the procedure of getting information easier and avoid unnecessary intermediaries in the working process.
The Usefulness of Interactive Documentation for IT
Interactive documentation is widely used in the industry of information technologies as it allows to add content that is important for the work of many parts of a project team.
As project documentation is one of the most important parts of the development cycle, interactive documentation allows making the process of work easier for all the members by providing visual and explanatory information for everyone.
Most Popular Tools of Interactive Documentation
Creating interactive documentation implies the usage of specific software which helps to build documents properly according to technical standards. Some most widespread programs allow to do that:
- ProProfs Knowledge Base – is a tool that can be really helpful while hiring new people to the team. It allows creating some kind of a digital book in which new employees may discover and know more about the business. It also allows the addition of video and audio content besides standard text and pictures.
- MarkdownPad – is considered one of the most famous document editors for Windows. The main functionality allows us to write interactive software documentation and look at it from the point of HTML language.