[AccessD] Microsoft Office Support - animated GIFs

[Gustav Brock]

Thank you all for the very useful feedback!

I have assembled the essence of all the topics touched in your feedback and passed it anonymized to Jeff - and already got the answer, why animated GIFs aren't that great: Accessibility.

So, that is why you only meet very few of these at the Microsoft support pages.

I can add, that the second animated GIF now has been replaced with a neat video. 

This video also has sound - for the simple reason that various tests with pages using videos with sound gives a measurable better user response than pages with dumb videos.

Nothing is random.

/gustav

Fra: mailto:accessmvp at googlegroups.com [mailto:accessmvp at googlegroups.com] På vegne af Gustav Brock
Sendt: 12. april 2018 10:06
Til: Access Developers discussion and problem solving <mailto:accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
Emne: [AccessMVP] Microsoft Office Support - animated GIFs

Hi all

Microsoft is currently busy with improving the support and help pages, focusing on those with a poor feedback.
Recently, I worked with Jeff Conrad to improve a topic I recall - in my early Access days -  to be difficult to get hold on, due to the total lack of visual help: Union queries.

The old article was lengthy and with much text, and for many - from the feedback to read - simply uncomprehensive.
So, I brought in the collapsible view used widely by Microsoft and some animated GIFs to make it more appealing.

While animated GIFs is a quick method to visualise things, they aren't easy to edit, and they are not that user friendly - you cannot stop the animation, and it isn't easy to start over, and - in general - users are more familiar with videos. 
Thus, Jeff decided to remake them as videos. Only the first has been replaced, so the second GIF is still on-line:

    Use a union query to combine multiple queries into a single result
    https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Use-a-union-query-to-combine-multiple-queries-into-a-single-result-1F772EC0-CC73-474D-AB10-AD0A75541C6E

What do you think of this format?

I'm not asking for "likes" (= This page was helpful). Rather, you should not, as you are not in the target group.

/gustav