Podcast: Flare 4 — Ten New Features, Interview with Sharon Burton
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Duration: 60 min.
Flare 4 was just released today by Madcap Software. In this podcast, I talk with Sharon Burton — product manager at Madcap Software — about all the main features of the Flare 4 release.
Flare 4 topics we discuss include the following:
- Page layouts
- New outputs (PDF, XPS, XHTML, and Adobe Air)
- Enhanced reporting capability
- Built-in topic reviews
- Additional help guides
- Global project linking
- Image resizing
- Smart cross-references
- Mini-TOCs for print
Although Flare 4 is the core focus of this podcast, Sharon also explains a little about Madcap’s other new releases, including Blaze, X-Edit, and Analyzer.
As if releasing 4 new products (Flare 4, Blaze, Analyzer, and X-Edit) on one day wasn’t enough, Madcap also totally redesigned its website.
If you have questions about Flare 4 or any other Madcap product, direct them to Sharon at sburton@madcapsoftware.com. You can also visit Sharon Burton’s blog at http://madcapsoftware.wordpress.com. You can visit Mike Hamilton’s blog at http://madcapsoftware2.wordpress.com.
If you have feedback on the podcast, add your comment below the post or send me an email at tomjohnson1492@gmail.com.
Contest Note: By the way, today is the last day to enter the Flare 4 giveaway. (If you missed the post about the Flare 4 contest, see “Flare 4 Giveaway — Enter to Win a Free Copy by Commenting on this Post“). In the contest deadlines, I said I would announce the winner on the day of the Flare 4 release. So Monday night (Sep 8) at 9 p.m. MST, I will announce the winner. You can enter the contest up until that time.
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Pingback: Foul Writer’s World - Flare 4 out of the bag
thanks for info
I respect Sharon, Mike, and everybody else I have met at MadCap software, but the story about Doc-to-Help stealing ideas disappoints me.
Doc-To-Help helped create the HAT industry, releasing in 1991. It has enjoyed a strong following ever since and has always been developed in response to emerging trends and customer needs. Doc-To-Help does not and has never created roadmaps on a copy-cat philiosophy. If anybody doubts, that download it and see for yourself.
(I am the Product Manager for Doc-To-Help)
Dan, I meant no disrespect to you or your products. I used that story to show my excitement at joining MadCap and being part of impacting the tools for the industry I’ve loved for almost 20 years.
The story as told is true. I was at the Red River Conference in Winnipeg last spring. During a lull, I spoke with (it may have been you, but I’m beyond bad at names, so I’m not certain).
We at MadCap were flattered that our UI is influencing other products. Good ideas are contagious and this is how it should be. Our customers benefit and the industry benefits from good ideas spreading.
In no way was I disparaging your products. I’m sure your teams work as hard as ours do to develop products that are useful to our customers.
I, in turn, mean no disrespect to you or your products.
I don’t want this to be a debate, but I do want to make things clear for the readers of this blog. Since they may get bored with a lengthy thread, I hope that we can end this discussion with one last clarification.
Given the facts, I can’t imagine anyone from my staff saying those things. Perhaps something was misunderstood. At any rate, Doc-To-Help 2009 releases within a week or two and it does have an editor. Its editor is much different than Flare’s. One look will make it obvious that we based its design on our own technology/ideas. If our ideas are based on anything, it is Microsoft’s design standards (we work very closely with Microsoft). In fact, we want our editor experience to be much like writing in Word.
This is not commentary on Flare’s interface. We just want to make sure the community knows that Doc-To-Help is a very different tool backed by brilliant and experienced engineers. In fact, one worked at what is now a leading content authoring company.
P.S. I can’t believe no one bashed me for two typos on a writer’s blog
I also have a lot of respect for Sharon and for MadCap Software. MadCap’s presence in the help authoring tools market has increased the general level of innovation in what had been a stagnant area.
Having said that, I was disappointed to hear Sharon implicitly accuse the Doc-To-Help team of stealing Flare’s ideas. The HATT vendors are often less than collegial to each other, but this sort of sniping has been, and should stay, private.
In the end, I don’t think users care whether one company steals ideas from another, or accuses another of stealing ideas. I would hope that all companies would borrow ideas from each other. For example, I’d love for BlackBerry to imitate the graphics of an iPhone. Do I care if one company’s designs are “original”? Or if a company accuses another of imitation? No. I care about usability and functionality.
Rhaheem, the point and the context to the story is NOT how our competitors are “stealing” our ideas nor to snipe. The point and context to that story is how exciting it is for me, personally, to be part of a company that’s strongly influencing our industry. I get to make a difference every day and that’s *very* exciting for me.
All the tools developers influence each other. One team creates something that the market likes. Customers ask for that sort of feature from the other vendors. It’s normal and expected. At least, if we’re listening to our customers!
For example, one of the complaints about Frame is its Unix heritage shows too strongly and it should look more like a Windows app. When I was teaching Frame at the local U, I had to spend an hour just on the interface because it was confusing to Windows people. My students would sigh and ask why they didn’t change it to be more like Word?
Dan, the story is true as told. Please understand even at MadCap we never thought of it as “copy catting”. Good ideas are good ideas. I look forward to seeing Doc2Help 2009 and what it brings to the market.
Sharon Burtons last blog post..No one releases 4 products at once
Is it just me or is it everytime i download the mp3 on this page its nowhere near 60 minutes as stated. but closer towards 32 minutes 37 seconds.
i tried downloading it twice and its always 32 minutes 37 seconds..and the show doesn’t seem to be finished…hmm…
i think snagit and camtasia (techsmith) use DocToHelp and ComponentOnes ribbon UI components.
Flare’s what we use. I think Innovasys Help Studio has a nice template driven development model and hey it supports translation (out of the box) how’s that! 
You should check out the iPhone, HTC Touch and Samsung phones…
anyway…i’ve discovered some key tips about Flare 4 that i’ll post on the forums…
@4Fear, no, the podcast is an hour long. I just redownloaded it and checked. It’s an 87 MB file.
I’m looking forward to reading your key tips.
I did it with chrome last week. last night with IE, but i had to break the connection due to a phone call. I think its possible IE is caching the old download. I am flushing the cache and restarting the download.
Finally hints on the actual Madcap technical writer who wrote the help files. amazing. i learned how to write and design help systems early in my career by referring to Adobe RoboHelps help file and now Flare…haha…in the days before always on Internet
@4Fear, I agree that Madcap’s tech writer is pretty amazing. I mean, Madcap is a relatively small company. To have the tech writer located on the other coast and still produce highly accurate, thorough documentation so many weeks before the release — that’s a feat.