Documentation enables sharing knowledge between the developers of a technology and its users. Creating quality documents, however, is challenging: Documents must satisfy the needs of a large audience without being overwhelming for individuals. We address this challenge with a new document format, named Casdoc. Casdoc documents are interactive resources centered around code examples for programmers. Explanations of the code elements are presented as annotations that the readers reveal based on their needs. We evaluated Casdoc in a field study with over 300 participants who used 126 documents as part of a software design course. The majority of participants adopted Casdoc instead of a baseline format during the study. We observed that interactive documents can contain more information than static documents without being distracting to readers. We also gathered insights into five aspects of Casdoc that can be applied to other formats, and propose five guidelines to improve navigability in online documents.

翻译：文档技术能够使技术开发者与用户之间实现知识共享。然而，创建高质量的文档极具挑战性：文档既要满足广大受众的需求，又不能使个体用户感到信息过载。针对这一挑战，我们提出了一种名为Casdoc的新型文档格式。Casdoc文档是以程序员为中心、围绕代码示例构建的交互式资源。代码元素的解释以注释形式呈现，读者可根据自身需求选择性地查看。我们开展了一项田野研究，在软件设计课程中使用126份文档对300余名参与者进行Casdoc评估。研究期间，大多数参与者采用Casdoc取代了基准格式。我们观察到，与静态文档相比，交互式文档能够在不对读者造成干扰的情况下承载更多信息。我们还总结了Casdoc五个方面的设计特性（可应用于其他文档格式），并提出五项在线文档导航优化指南。