Help is at Your Fingertips
“Nobody reads the manual” is a common refrain when discussing documentation. For software, many users simply open the program, fumble around and begin using the application without looking at a setup guide or pressing F1 for help. And many users who search for a “getting started guide” are confronted with a vast repository of .pdf files, requiring a best guess at which tome contains the nugget of information they need. With mobile and desktop applications increasing in usability, the dusty old users’ manual seems more like a bygone artifact of antiquity than a required, helpful aid.
Which explains, in part, why TT abandoned user manuals.
Everything from our system administration and user manuals to our setup and getting started guides has been opened to the internet via the new Help Library. This allows a user to open the browser, enter a search term and quickly find the information they need. Want to find out howX_TRADER supports NYMEX products? Or simply how to collect logfiles in TT User Setup? You can now access all TT content in less than a second—without searching a 200+ page document.
The new searchable online Help Library gives you immediate access to manuals,
guides and reference materials for client and server products.
In TT’s early days during the 1990s, we delivered all content in large, bound print documents. Years later, we moved to a then-new electronic format (.pdf) and embedded large, cumbersome help systems directly into the software. Moving to a purely web-based delivery system is just the next step in improving the overall user experience.
But what about users who simply want a page-turning introduction to trading with TT? For them, we have started delivering new Learning Guides to provide an overview of key features and functionality within TT software. Learning Guides are targeted to quickly take users from novice to pro in their own time. We have started with three very focused guides for ADL®, X_TRADER® and MultiBroker, and we will expand the content to include other features and functionality.
And of course, the Learning Guides are provided in an easy-to-use, web-based format.
Because we believe that all information should be readily accessible. Information should be free. Information is for all and should be treated as a democratized gem shining brightly as an emblem of freedom and liberty!
But I digress.
The goal is not to bury you with an endless sea of content, but rather to free your time for more important things (like actually trading) by helping to guide you directly to the information you need—without having to pick the right book off a virtual shelf. With our new online search-based help system, you shouldn’t have to read an entire manual ever again.