Each technical communication conference I attend, one of the activities that attendees look forward to is strolling through the exhibit hall, perusing the various tech comm booths, picking up freebies and fliers, listening to vendor pitches, and generally taking in the tech comm world of products. With that in mind, and as an opportunity to give more visibility to my sponsors, I offer a regular … more »

I read a blog post the other day that I can’t stop thinking about. In the Myth of Single Sourcing, Michael Hiatt writes, The main issue for me is between authoring static in-house documents using single-sourcing methods before publishing, or capturing information sources dynamically after publishing from online social networks, linked data sources, and knowledge mashups. The myth of single-source authoring is that it actually … more »

WritersUA – The WritersUA Tools Survey – Tools.

My WordPress Tattoo – Baker’s Hours. You don’t see people putting RoboHelp tattoos on their bodies, do you?

Technically Speaking » A shout out to MadCap Support

Recently the Hat Matrix Blog (aka, the Mad Hatter) published the results of a tools survey that included 590 participants. The respondents were asked what authoring tools they used on a regular basis. They answered as follows: Flare: 40% Framemaker: 33% RoboHelp: 27% Author-it: 13% Dreamweaver: 13% HTML Help Workshop: 12% Madpak: 12% WebWorks ePublisher: 11% helpware FAR: 7% RoboHelp for Word: 7% Adobe Tech … more »

A few weeks ago I started experimenting with surveys in my sidebar, mostly informal, and mainly to try out different WordPress plugins. Little did I know my surveys would incite so much controversy. The latest poll, “Which Authoring Tool Is Best for You?” has received nearly 600 votes from people around the world, and was discussed at length on the HATT listserv. In all this … more »

My Interview Experience at IBM, By Subha at TWB. It’s really interesting to see that IBM, the hub of DITA authoring, asks lots of tough RoboHelp questions in their interviews. Huh???

Download MP3 Duration: 30 min. [Audio clip: view full post to listen] In this podcast, I talk with Theresa Putkey, a writer/usability consultant in Vancouver, about the largest project of her career. She explains how she approached a project that had upwards of 2,500 help topics, many of which consisted of duplicate content. She explains how she transitioned from RoboHelp to Flare, the advantages she … more »

Madcap Flare is one of the most advanced, functionally robust online help tools for technical writers who want to single source their content. When you use Flare to create an actual project (rather than just experimenting with a trial version), you come to know the ins and outs, the major benefits and the quirks, its usability and learning curve, the things you love and the … more »

Charles Jeter recorded an excellent podcast with Mike Hamilton, V.P. of product management at Madcap Software, and posted it on his blog yesterday. Jeter is a technical writer in the California area who has been carefully analyzing the online help tool market. The following are some of my takeaways from the podcast:

I recently received an email from a reader who asked to know what the job of a technical writer is like. Anoop writes, I am a computer science Master’s student at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. I am in my second year and I am on the lookout for jobs. Other than the system software engineer posts, I am considering applying for a job … more »

Rob Houser’s recent article in Writers UA, “What’s New in RoboHelp 7?“, is a thorough, insightful article I highly recommend. After reading his review, I thought I’d post a few notes from my experiences with the same. (For more about Rob, see his site.) This past month I’ve been heavily using the RoboHelp 7 and Captivate 3 components of the Technical Communication Suite. RoboHelp 7 … more »

I was reading an article in a previous STC Intercom magazine about how to add a Send Feedback link to your online help project, but the javascript didn’t work. Here’s an alternative method that does work.  This Send Feedback link grabs the page title and URL and includes it in the e-mail that the user sends. The method below describes the integration using RoboHelp, but … more »

I made a help file showing a sample integration of Captivate with Robohelp, specifically showing screen demos inside hotspots. I like that the screen demos hide so nicely. (The content of the demos is not what I’m showing here, but if you’re totally new to Audacity, you might find them helpful as a basic intro.) Let me know if you have any feedback.