I'm looking to find high quality template files for Pages for creating user documentation (user guides, user manauls, software manuals, quick-start guides, etc). I have not been able to find anything for these purposes -- the few available for MS Word are terrible. Sure would appreciate any advice from the community on this. Thank you!
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.2)
Create your own. It is not hard to get the specifications from Apple's User Guides for example, they are .pdf files, or to use them as underlays to superimposed pages templates.
You maybe able to find something at:
Peter
Peter: I appreaciate you taking the time to respond, but I'm looking for a professionally designed templates -- I've already written one manual, but would like to try some different designs...not try to create a design mysleft.
I'm surprised that Pages doesn't come with some type of a manual or user guide template. Us poor techies aren't necessarily that creative when it comes to putting the documentation together, but it's necessary if you are creating complex products. Also, there are plenty of companies out there that creating "products" and they all have to produce user-based documentation of the proper use and operation of their equipment. That is why I'm asking if anyone can point me to some pre-built template files. They don't have to be free, but I know I'm not the only one looking for them.
Don
What are you willing to pay me, if you don't want to do it for yourself?
You are aware that Apple is not using Pages to produce its manuals? It uses Indesign.
It would be possible to create one in Pages however.
There is a reason why you will not find templates for specific trade documents like User Guides. Professional designers are used not just to create these but to ensure that they do what they are supposed to do, which is accurately inform the user to keep support costs to a minimum.
Templates are usually for domestic use with a much wider audience.
Peter
Peter: I indicated clearly in my last sentance that the templates don't have to be free. I heard Apple uses In Design, but that doesn't matter. Almost any product on the market needs some type of manual, be it a 1-page quick-start guide or a 300 book. If you make a product (hardware or software) you have to produce a manual for it. It just seems reasonable that someone has produced some Pages templates to do this task. All I'm asking is if anyone has run across some and can point me in the right direction.
Don
As I explained the narrow usage and probably even your specific brief for a User Guide rules out there being a generalised solution floating around on the web.
I am sure you have googled for one before coming here.
What you will find (not much) usually is poor quality, in Word and difficult to use in practice.
Who is going to put the time and effort into a complex document to either give away or attract a bare few clients who want to pay less for it than they would a good coffee and sandwich?
You will get hundreds if not thousands of customers for a simple Christmas card. The effort involved and the returns may in those cases match. Professionally designed templates for a large publications take time and effort, for which people like to get adequate pay, but have few customers.
Peter
Peter: I just asked a simple question if anyone knew of a resource for quality user-manual style templates for Pages. That's all. I would hope there would be enough people on this forum that someone may have run into something like this or something that could be modified to accommodate this requirement. I appreciate you taking the time to answer and I don't disagree with anything you said, but my question still stands for the forum.
StockLayouts does not, for the reasons I gave above. You can pay to have them create one for you.
They make Pages versions of their templates but they are auto-converted documents from Quark Xpress and lack all the features, including styling, that a good template should have to work. As much as I like their designs, in practice they are more trouble than they are worth.
I googled, as you should have, and hit only a couple of Word templates. Neither very good, but then maybe you would have liked them.
Peter
Have you looked at the commercial templates available. At Jumsoft or StockLayouts ?
I looked at Jumsoft, didn't know about StockLayouts -- I'll check it out. Thank you.
User Guide/User Manual/Software templates?
