What View Should Online Readers Use?

While users can read documents in normal view or page layout view, the best view for reading online is online layout view (View menu).

Why? Because of increased legibility through larger fonts and more space between lines. Online layout view also hides screen elements (such as the ruler and horizontal scroll bar) that aren’t critical for online reading. It also offers the Document Map, which displays an outline of the document headings.

Recommend that online readers remove toolbars   Since online readers won’t be editing the manual, you might want to recommend that they remove toolbars and the status bar to clear more screen space. To do so, tell users to click Toolbars (View menu) and then to click the toolbars with check marks.

Hands-Free Reading

If online readers with Word for Windows have the Microsoft IntelliMouse pointing device, you might want to point out that they can use the device to automatically scroll at reading speed. All readers need to do is click the wheel button to start the AutoScroll feature.