MVP Mary Deaton

Microsoft Corporation

Updated: February 26, 1998

Mary Deaton wrote her first Help in 1990, using Windows 3.0 Help. She worked at Microsoft in those days, where she learned Help authoring the hard way: one footnote code at a time in Word. During her tenure in Redmond, Mary did writing and editing on Word for Windows, Works, and other products. She also managed documentation teams and founded the first training program for Microsoft technical writers and editors. Since then she's had to pay retail for her software, discovered the beauty of using Help authoring tools to automate Help development, and founded KNOWware, a company specializing in custom development of online user assistance, training, and performance support tools.

KNOWware publishes dozens of online systems a year, most done with Windows Help and, increasingly, with HTML or HTML Help. Mary spreads her knowledge in various ways. She was one of the first contributing editors for the WinHelp Journal and is always on the podium during the annual WinWriters Online Help Conference. She is co-author with Cheryl Lockett Zubak of Designing Windows 95 Help: A Guide to Creating Online Documents (Que, 1996).

KNOWware has just published the first training course of Microsoft's new HTML Help product, HTML Help in a Hurry. The course is used by national and local training companies, including Solutions Seminars and Sakson and Taylor. Trainers from KNOWware teach Microsoft employees how to use HTML Help. A judge at the Society of Technical Communication's International Online Competition for the past two years, Mary is also active judging and organizing the online competition for her local STC chapter.