Study of organizational factors affecting usability of online helps with programming languages

Abstract

One of the most common resources for assistance to users while dealing with programming languages is online help, which is topic-oriented, procedural or reference information delivered through online software. This research paper reports observations about organizational factors with online helps for programming languages. These observations are viz. Organized Index of Content, Hyperlinks, Grouping of Items, Use of Tables / Charts / figures, Scrolling Effect, Cascading Effect, Multilingual Support and Help in Video Format. They are compiled based on authors' experience, discussions with active users and literature study about online helps. The users with programming languages can be classified as tool users, programmers, developers and architects. We find that organized index, hyperlinks, grouping of items and use of tables / charts / figures are important for all users with programming languages. These organizational factors directly affect the usability of online helps with programming languages. They should be considered by designers / developers of such online helps so that their users are encouraged in efficient usage and referencing while dealing with products / systems like programming languages. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.