The Help Authoring Tools survey in my blog's sidebar has been the source of no little controversy, and I've left it up there for a reason. I've been telling myself that when 1,000 people participate, I'll officially analyze the results. (So far 784 have voted.) However, Char James-Tanny announced a new help authoring tools survey, this one sponsored by the HAT-Matrix (not to be confused with the Matrix movie). The new HAT-Matrix's survey ...
Help Authoring Tool Survey: Who, What, and How
In a recent IT Author podcast ("Documentation and Agile Development"), Alistair Christie and Graham Campbell talk about agile development and its impact on documentation. One consequence of working in an agile environment, they say, is the need to prioritize your documentation, to deliver instructions for only the most important or confusing features. Presumably, some agile environments move so fast, you have to triage what you document b...
Listen here: 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 ...
Flossmanuals.net is a new wiki help authoring/publishing tool hybrid that, as far as I know, is completely unique. The site is more than a wiki. It allows groups of authors to create specific chapters independently. You can then remix the chapters into any arrangement and selection you want through a drag-and-drop interface. Finally, you can export the selection as a PDF file. Alternatively, you can embed the manual on a separate site usi...
Listen here: Having taken a three-month podcasting break, it feels good to be back. In this podcast, I talk with Charles Jeter and Heidi Hansen about what's new in the field of technical communication. See the sections below for the four main topics we discuss. Note: If you've never listened to a podcast before, see my brief page on How to Listen to Podcasts. Hosts Heidi Hansen (see Heidi's blog) Charles Jeteter (see ...
Last week Shannon informed me that we needed to attend her family reunion, which occurs every four years, more or less following the Olympics. Family reunions in Utah, it turns out, are a big deal. Her cousins and aunts and uncles drove in from all around the region, from Arizona and Idaho and Washington. They rented out an entire campground over at Warm Springs, Utah – about 2 hours southeast of Salt Lake City. More than 50 people atten...
Flare 4 Giveway — Enter to Win a Free Copy by Commenting on This Post | I'd Rather Be Writing - Tom Johnson
Madcap Flare Madcap Software is preparing to release Flare 4 shortly (an exact date hasn't been announced). Being the cool people they are, they gave me a free copy of Flare 4 to give away. Flare costs around $899, so this is a deal. I'll also be doing a podcast on Flare with Sharon Burton later this week, and will post it probably on Monday. Without further ado, here are the rules of the Flare giveaway contest: In the comments below th...
It seems like everything happened today. First, Google released Chrome, their new browser. It's a bit faster, and I can see a good rationale for Google having a browser, with all their online applications. I've tried Chrome and like it, although it doesn't seem revolutionary -- yet. Not only did Google release Chrome, they also released a totally original comic book explaining Chrome. I got through about 5 pages of it. Novel. Not necessa...
In Utah, technical writers abound but are hidden. Utah probably has at least 500 technical writers spread out across companies all over the state (most in Northern Utah), but communication among the technical writers is sparse. The community is a little disconnected. One value the STC provided in Tampa, Florida, was a sense of community in the local region. Sure the presenters were sometimes boring, but at least you got to know other tec...
Resources for Single Sourcing Projects
Several people have asked if I have a list of all the podcasts I've published (rather than having to page through the archives). I just added a comprehensive list below the Tech Writer Voices graphic on the right sidebar. Click the See all episodes link. (By the way, I created that page by inserting the loop on a page template, stripping out the content tag, limiting the category to the Tech Writer Voices, and expanding the display count ...
If you've listened to podcasts on my site, you'll notice that for the past 3 months, I haven't posted any new podcasts. It's also been about three months since Aaron or Scott from DMN Communications published a podcast. What happened? Is podcasting dead? No, podcasting is not dead. But I'll explain my break. I've been riding the bus/train to work for the past 9 months (I actually got rid of my old car, which I had to jumpstart each morn...
I'm amazed at how easily people can make sites look both professional and functional in a short period of time using WordPress. Clyde Parson, the STC-Suncoast chapter in Tampa, just redid the Suncoast STC with a new WordPress theme. It looks pretty cool. Back when I lived in Tampa, the Suncoast STC site was already created in WordPress, but there was an initiative to migrate the site to Drupal for its password-protection capabilities (whi...
