Browse sequences, TOCs, organizing tutorials?

[stephgl]

I'm doing a Help that will have both reference sections and tutorial sections. I'm trying to see what the difference really is between browse sequences and the regular TOC from the user's point of view. From what I gather so far, they look so very similar in the navigation pane.

I was imagining having "Previous" and "Next" buttons at the top of each page, and maybe mini-tocs for the topics within each lesson.

Does anyone have advice about the best way to structure tutorial sequences? I will have maybe 10 lessons with several exercises and topics in each.

Thanks!
-Steph

[RamonS]

You are right in your expectation as to how browse sequences should work. Create a structure like a ToC where each browse sequence appears as a book. Select the book and use the forward and back arrows to browse exclusively within the selected browse sequence.
Some time ago I crafted my browse sequences like that and found out that Flare really just treats them exactly like a ToC, just without autosynching, and the forward and back buttons are just that, like the ones in any browser. That means that the browsing using these buttons isn't limited to the scope of the browse sequence. That's why I also didn't see the point in being able to create multiple browse sequences as nothing is gained from that.
As I said, that was some time ago and Flare came out with some new versions since then, but I haven't heard of any changes to that. For some the current implementation may work, but I think it falls short by quite several miles.
Try it out in your project. If it doesn't work for you, you can always yank the whole stuff out or keep it as alternative organizational scheme and place text links or images with links on the tutorial topics so that the user has some guidance.

[stephgl]

Thanks Ramon, I'll give it a try and see what it does. I think my software engineer is going to expect "previous" and "next" buttons within the topic though, so I may be using a belt and suspenders in the end.

Have a great weekend,
-Steph