Blog Sponsors

• MindTouch
• DocuTools Writing System
• Madcap Software
• Dr.Explain
• Scriptorium
• Adobe Technical Communication Suite 2
• Snagit from TechSmith

I prefer to have Word resize my screenshots (to a smaller size) because images look a lot sharper and crisper when Word resizes them rather than when SnagIt or Photoshop resizes them (even with smooth scaling selected).

Whatever your cleanup process, you might find the following image resizing macro helpful. It only resizes images that have a specific style (p_Result) before the image. It resizes the image to 75% of its original size.

Note: It’s important to isolate images that are surrounded by a specific style because you don’t want to resize all your images. You don’t want your note, tip, caution, and button images shrunk to 75% of their original size. Also, your substep images may need to have smaller sizes than your regular image sizes.

Here’s the macro:

Sub ImageResize()
Dim PercentSize As Integer
Dim MyStyle As String
Dim oIshp As InlineShape
Dim oshp As Shape
PercentSize = InputBox(“Enter percent of full size”, “ResizePicture “, 75)
MyStyle = “p_Result”
With ActiveDocument
For Each oIshp In .InlineShapes
With oIshp
If .Range.Paragraphs(1).Style = MyStyle Then
.ScaleHeight = PercentSize
.ScaleWidth = PercentSize
End If
End With
Next oIshp
For Each oshp In .Shapes
With oshp
If .Anchor.Paragraphs(1).Style = MyStyle Then
.ScaleHeight Factor:=(PercentSize / 100), _
RelativeToOriginalSize:=msoCTrue
.ScaleWidth Factor:=(PercentSize / 100), _
RelativeToOriginalSize:=msoCTrue
End If
End With
Next oshp
End With
End Sub

If you have no idea how to integrate a macro into your Word document, follow these steps. (This applies to Word 2007.)

1. Click the Developer tab, and then click the Macros button.
2. Type a name for the macro, such as ImageResize, and then click Create.
3. Highlight the code that starts with Sub ImageResize and ends with End Sub.
4. Paste the sample code above in its place, and then click Save and close the macro window.

To run the macro, first make sure your images have a p_Result style before them. Then do the following:

1. Click the Developer tab, and then click the Macros button.
2. Select the ImageResize macro, and click the Run button.

You may be wondering exactly what sponsorship involves. Basically, it’s different for each company, but I’m offering promotion on my podcasts in exchange for a free copy of the company’s product. This is actually something that Heidi Hansen, my co-host, encouraged me to do long ago.

So for the past week, I’ve been exploring MadCap Flare Version 3.1 with a lot more depth than I explored the trial version of the 2.0 release last year. I’m thoroughly impressed with Flare. It provides a robust, functional online help tool that simply works. When I say robust, I mean it. The granularity of the style editor is powerful — allowing you to create stylesheets for both online and print formats.

Some other things that stand out:

• The generated output to print actually conforms to the styles you configure in the style editor.
• The conditional tagging is intuitive and easy to apply.
• The net DotNet format allows you to deliver context-sensitive help that is embedded and dynamic.
• The Webhelp skin is easy to customize.
• Flare’s built-in help is excellent — no need for a third-party book to guide you through the product.

Although some aspects aren’t as obvious as I hoped, Flare is a tool that I won’t easily grow out of. And their expansion into other areas — screen capture, audio, translation, screen demo, and more — makes their product suite compelling. In some ways Flare is similar to RoboHelp, and in many other ways it’s completely unique.

I know I sound like a marketing brochure, so I will admit one thing I don’t understand about Flare. A new feature of Flare is Easy-Sync, explained as follows:

A first in the industry. Flare supports two different work flows when importing Microsoft Word or Adobe FrameMaker documents. With the standard import you can leverage existing content and then continue your editing and maintenance using Flares built in editor. However, with the new Easy Sync capability you can have Flare treat the original Word or FrameMaker document as the source file. This allows you to do all of your edits and maintenance in the original Word or FrameMaker document and still get all of the powerful publishing capabilities of Flare. The first tool in the industry to support two different work flows within the same product.

What I don’t understand is why anyone would want to maintain a source file in Microsoft Word and then publish to an online help format. Flare’s online help editor is so much easier to format and manipulate content than Word. Working in Microsoft Word and publishing to online help seems backwards.

The only logic I see is that some authors may prefer Word due to their familiarity with it.

MadCap’s pace is impressive, and the sophistication and functionality of Flare is astounding considering that the product is less than 2 years old.

Look to some upcoming podcasts dedicated specifically to Flare and other Madcap products.

By the way, are you a Flare user? I’d be interested to hear your experiences with it or any other Madcap product.