[benjaminpv]

It's not as high-minded as the examples in the link, but as a kid I really enjoyed Woody Leonhard's "Mother of All..." books about Windows (the 3.1 and 95 ones, specifically).

Woody introduced a series of characters, each with their own personality & level of familiarity with Windows itself, then used them in asides to explain things. The great thing about those books (and something I seldom see anymore) is that they were really great about riding the line between 'the power button is the button you press to turn the computer on' and 'the A20 gate defines when low memory etc. etc. etc.'

Having the characters gave a great way to get super-deep into minutiae but let the reader know they could skip if it didn't interest them, plus their interactions with each other were really fun.

Also, and I'm sure most people know him already, I always really loved how David Pogue would put weird little stories or dialog in the examples he'd give when demonstrating a program. Like I think Macs for Dummies had a bit where his Word examples had a really flowery story about a guy riding a rollercoaster or something. Really influenced me, whenever I create a demo UI or example page I try not to use boring "This is example text" or "Lorem ipsum."