Tech Writer Today Magazine - TechWhirl
Technical writing and technical communications news, articles and resources for technical writers and technical communicators.
What's so exciting about RoboHelp 10? Aside from moving away from the X versioning symbolized in Adobe Acrobat and the Apple MacOS, that is? Quite a bit, indeed. RoboHelp 10 offers many new features, but I’m focusing this review on two areas important to technical communicators: producing online help for mobile applications and simplified review workflows with PDF comments enabled for Adobe Reader. Continue reading ...
For the last decade or longer, the idea of “online help” really has been something of a misnomer. With more applications living on smart phones and other mobile devices that can access the Internet at will, the promise of genuinely online help can now be realized. The most extensive upgrades in the Adobe Technical Communication Suite 4 come to RoboHelp 10. Continue reading ...
Adobe Systems has provided some tantalizing hints as to when it would release the new Technical Communication Suite 4.0, and what might be in it. The when is today, July 24, 2012. And the what addresses a lot requests and requirements that TCS users have been asking for. The TCS team was listening, and the result is a nicely integrated set of tools that meet the future of technical communications head on. Continue reading ...
Somehow, I never really thought of a pre-conference session as one of those can’t-miss, full house events. I am happy to rework my thinking after attending Adobe’s Thought Leadership & Content Strategy event that took place prior to the start of the STC Summit 2012 in Chicago. The well-known leaders Adobe brought together spoke to a standing room only crowd (really!) on the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for technical communicators in the next decade. It was facilitated by Tom Aldous, Director of Business Development and Product Evangelism for Adobe Technical Communication. While there were some differences of opinion and prediction, consensus revolved around one key phrase—"Adaptive Content"—and one prefix that can be attached to much of the technical communication strategy and tactics that will emerge over the next decade—"Multi-." Continue reading ...
During WritersUA 2012, Adobe® hosted a tool seminar with several presenters, each one speaking to a unique feature or in more detail on a feature of Technical Communication Suite (TCS). The package allows for authoring DITA-compliant content in FrameMaker®, publishing to multiple outputs with RoboHelp® and Captivate®, and adding images, demos or simulations with Photoshop® and Captivate. Outputs include print, PDF, EPUB, AIR®, WebHelp, XML and HTML. Continue reading ...
Tom Aldous, Director of Business Development and Product Evangelism for Adobe’s Technical Communications business, is a gracious man—he sat down with TechWhirl on several occasions to highlight the happenings in the world of FrameMaker and RoboHelp, discuss the issues pertaining to content management, selection and implementation of XML authoring and publishing tools. We found the conversations enlightening, informative, and entertaining. Continue reading ...
As a technical writer developing large online help projects, I faced challenges in managing the editing process–specifically, ensuring consistency across each of the help files and controlling versions of the help as edits are made. In this article, I describe the editing structure and process adopted in our department to help address these problems, which, [...] Continue reading ...