[Elecraft] A modest proposal...

[n5ge at n5ge.com]

Correct me if I'm wrong but it sounds like you are talking about catalog web
sites.  If you are, you have made the right choice.

Having worked in the printing and software development business, I can see both
sides of the issue.  Catalogs must be updated constantly to reflect changes in
technology and price changes.  Using web technology to keep them up to date is
the right choice. 

I once worked for Gulf Printing in Houston, TX.  At that time they were the
largest phone book and petroleum drilling equipment catalog printers in the USA.
When catalog and phone book time came around we had 24 hour a day activity with
two shifts.  We all got rich from overtime pay, but the cost to SW Bell and the
petroleum equipment venders must have been horrendous.  The Internet has taken
all of that away, except for small vendors.

As for Elecraft and similar businesses, trying to do what you suggest would be
very cost prohibitive due to the enormous development and maintenance cost of
that type of web application.  It would probably end up making the retail cost
of their products in line with the manufacturers of seven and ten killobuck
equipment, at the same time lowering their profit margin greatly.

I suspect that Elecraft does all of it's web development, and I think they do a
good job of it.

In closing, I do agree with the OP that looking into less use of paper is a good
idea.

Sorry for the long winded reply...

73,
Tom
Amateur Radio Operator N5GE
ARRL Lifetime Member
QCWA Lifetime Member




On Sun, 21 Aug 2011 10:07:40 -0700, Phil Hystad <phystad at mac.com> wrote:

>Actually, although the manuals are all available in the most recently updated versions as PDFs on the web site, I think another format would even be superior (in addition though, not replacing PDFs or printed).
>
>The other format is a nice interactive web site -- not merely a PDF called up with your browser but an interactive structured web "application" that includes the technical material and descriptions as well as cross linked to related items.  Color of course is valuable in this kind of thing along with lots of diagrams and schematic parts.  Maybe even background electronics or radio theory to deepen our understanding.
>
>Of course, this is hard to do and takes quite of design and effort to carry out -- but, we have done this in our own business for the big complicated wholesale energy markets we build.  I would point you to these sites but they require logins and unless you are a registered market participant you can't get access.
>
>Or, a much easier to accomplish system is one where the technical information of the manuals is decomposed into shorter one page (target this size at least) bits of information and then you use the power of HTML linking to create the access paths needed to discover information and read material.  This is a popular method for software documentation of large systems such as Microsoft or Apple.  Actually, I like Apple better but maybe that is my Mac fanaticism showing through.  Here is a pointer to the Mac developer pages as an example of what I mean: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/navigation/
>
>73, phil, K7PEH
>
>
[snip]