Poorly Written Graphic Tutorials and  So-Called Help Menus Remember when Denzel Washington (in The Pelican Brief) said, "Ok, explain it to me like I was four years old"?  That line should ring true for technical writers who neither practice simplicity of instruction nor adapt their instructions to the skill level of the audience for whom they are writing.  Technical writers are very smart.  They want others to know just how smart they are.  And they do.  They write in what is called "techneese," or highly technical language targeted primarily for other technical experts--but not for laypeople.  That is why most laypeople, who try to accomplish tasks described by technical writers, cannot do those tasks. I have run across some truly great online instructions for creating graphics.  I have also run across some rather pitiful ones.  The problem with the pitiful ones is that they are not clearly written, or they leave out important steps.  In other words, both the technical writer and reader become hopeless victims trying to perform a role for which neither one is the least bit prepared. I teach a course called Technical Writing at my university.  I have a Ph.D. in English.  I often do the "tie your shoe" trick with my students.  I tell them to write simple instructions for tying shoe laces.  Only a few can actually produce followable instructions for this simple procedure.  From this exercise my students learn a great deal about their target audience.  And they learn that even the simplest procedure requires step-by-step instructions that any four-year-old child could understand. Not exactly true for mouseover hover button tutorials.  Mouseover buttons light up or change color when a viewer runs the mouse over them.  They are flashy and KEWL, once the designer can get the codes to work (especially inside tables).  Many tutorials for mouseover look deceptively simple--until you try to apply them. After having spent several days trying to understand and apply some rather vague instructions for using the Mighty Mouseover Machine , I finally got the hang of it (the procedure requires a knowledge of raw html, by the way).  And I had to force the mouseover codes to work inside a table.  The tutorials don't mention the table problem. Ok, let's cut to the chase here.  Web pages should offer information and visually pleasing graphics.  But mouseover hover buttons are simply unnecessary, unless you really want to impress your viewers with these little doodads.  Hover buttons add what I call "gild on a hubcap"--i.e., gild on a  web page.  But the coding is long and laborious if you have quite a few buttons to "hover" on your page.  The Contents page of this site has mouseover buttons down the left side, and I was finally glad that I was able to accomplish such a feat of technical wizardry.  But they will be the only hover buttons in this site.  I don't want to create any more of them, ok? My advice: stay with SIMPLE.  Practice what our "Uncle Thoreau" once said: "Simplify, simplify simplify."  If you have tried something 4 times (retraced your steps and reread instructions time after time), and you still cannot produce the desired effect---then SCRAP IT.  SCRAP it immediately.  Go to something else.  Or find a better tutorial. But for those out there in cyberland who want to write online instructions for anything, PLEASE try to keep in mind WHO YOUR TARGET READERS ARE.  After you have written your instructions for something, then try to accomplish the task according to your own instructions.  If YOU can't do it (according to what you yourself have written), then how can you expect your readers to do it? More Pains My Awards For Web Sites That Don't Quite Make It