Adobe RoboHelp 9: Content reviews made easier
Last week Adobe’s Senior Product Evangelist, RJ Jacquez, released his sneak peek video of what was coming up in the new release of Adobe FrameMaker 10. Shortly after, Adode’s Product Manager for RoboHelp, Ankur Jain, announced support for Microsoft Word 2010 in the forthcoming Adobe RoboHelp 9. Now RJ Jacquez has released the first of a series of sneak peek videos highlighting one of the new work flows possible in Adobe RoboHelp 9.
Focusing on reviewing content, this is one of the areas in the new version of RoboHelp that I am most excited about. Getting content reviewed has always been one of the most troublesome experiences of my technical writing career. If my conversations with fellow professionals are anything to go by, this is true for most of us. Quite apart from getting the content reviewed, getting it into a deliverable that can be sent for review was quite another. Even when a deliverable was produced, what would you do with it? Email just doesn’t quite cut the mustard, especially where a shared review was concerned. Oh and what about trying to apply all those comments from multiple versions of a single file?
In this sneak peek RJ highlights how Adobe RoboHelp 9 had additional integration with Adobe Acrobat X Professional that allows you to:
- Create PDFs of your content.
- Save PDFs for review to either Acrobat.com, a Microsoft SharePoint workspace or a WebServer.
- Automatically generate emails to reviewers informing them of a review process.
The reviewers add their comments and suggested changes directly to the PDF using the free Adobe Acrobat Reader X application that can be downloaded from the Adobe site. They do not need access to the professional version of Acrobat as the functionality that allows them to, in effect, edit the PDF is inside the generated PDF. Any review comments are stored inside the PDF ready to be imported into your Adobe RoboHelp project. Once imported, you can see all the comments and decide whether to accept or reject them.
RJ’s video focuses mainly on his use of the Acrobat.com cloud to perform the review. You can forgive him focusing on this as it is a very useful portal for all sorts of stuff, but as a Microsoft SharePoint user it is the ability to lock our review into one of its workflows that really interests me. We currently have a workflow that works pretty well inside Microsoft SharePoint, but which requires a fair bit of manual work to identify to the reviewers what to review. It is Adobe RoboHelp’s ability to flag the actual content to be reviewed with a couple of mouse clicks that really makes a difference. In fact I would say that the usefulness of the Topic Status has finally come of age. Take a look and let me know what you think.
Microsoft Word 2010 Support in RoboHelp versions
As someone with a relationship with Adobe that is closer than a mere software provider to user, I am maybe more aware than some about the work going on behind the scenes in that company. This week it certainly seems like things are being ratcheted up a gear or two. Yesterday I blogged about Adobe’s FrameMaker 10 sneak peek. It is doing the rounds in preparation for that product’s release, whenever that will be. Now comes news from Adobe about support for Microsoft Word 2010 in another of its flagship technical communication products, Adobe RoboHelp.
How would Adobe FrameMaker 10 change your workflows?
It is an open secret that Adobe is working on new versions of FrameMaker, RoboHelp and the Technical Communication Suite. No release date has been mentioned yet but excitement amongst these products user base is growing. This has been fuelled by Adobe’s Senior Product Evangelist, RJ Jacquez, posting a sneak peek video on his blog outlining some of the new features in FrameMaker 10. Among them is the ability to:
- Edit Adobe Photoshop images inside your FrameMaker file. In particular the version of Photoshop included as part of the Adobe Technical Communication Suite 3 adds a Fill > Content Aware feature. This allows you to edit out unwanted picture elements by replacing them with whatever was in the background. Putting this cool feature aside, the added integration between FrameMaker and Photoshop should be a real winner to those using .PSD or .PDD files.
- Add 3D images. Prior to FrameMaker 10, 3D images added to files could only be seen in 2D. Now they can be seen in all their 3D glory with little more than the free Adobe Acrobat Reader application. You just add the image and create a PDF using the recently released Adobe Acrobat X Pro. This version will also be shipped with the Adobe Technical Communication Suite 3.
- Embed video or Adobe Captivate files. All popular video file formats and Captivate files can be embedded. A full list of the supported file types are included in RJ’s blog post. You can even add an image file to display as a placeholder for the file and act as an entry point to the content. Once there, you just create a PDF using Adobe Acrobat X Pro for the content to be available to any Acrobat Reader user.
We have already highlighted one use that could save us time, hassle and money. Our trainers give each and every student a printed Reference Guide to take away with them. It amounts to 200 to 400 pages depending on the course, printed in color and delivered in a shiny branded ring binder. What if we embedded some simulations inside the FrameMaker files used to create them and deliver the Reference Guides on a branded USB stick as a PDF? It would be a lot cheaper and give delegates more of an excuse to look at the content after they left our Training Centre.
But that’s us. What would you use it for?
RoboHelp versions: A definitive guide
RoboHelp version numbers are occasionally a source of wonder and bewilderment. This is especially true when you consider that the current version, RoboHelp 8, comes after RoboHelp 9. At least until the next version released by Adobe that is. As a user of RoboHelp since Adam gave up being naughty and became a Technical Writer, I am in a position to provide a list of each RoboHelp product version released since 1999. Although I have to thank Rick Stone for filling in some of the gaps!
Tooltips in RoboHelp hyperlinks
When you add a hyperlink, do you think twice about how you add it? I ask because quite often I don’t. I just add the path to the file and that’s it! In RoboHelp, as well as other HATs, there is a little more you can do to add value to them. How about a tooltip? Tooltips are fairly common inside applications to add a short description of a toolbar icon or field, but they are often overlooked inside a help file. Why I don’t know as they can add real user assistance value. After all, why should a help file offer less help than the UI?
OK I’m convinced. How can I use them?
The next time you add a hyperlink in RoboHelp, look at the “Screen Tip text” field. Any text you enter here is displayed as a tooltip when the user rests their cursor over the hyperlink in the published deliverable. Think about how this could be used. You could add further context to the user to let them know they are going to the right place. Just add up to 512 characters in the field, although less is definitely more in this case! Take the following example:
Here I have inserted a hyperlink to a file inside another RoboHelp project that forms part of a merged WebHelp help file. Note the text entered in the “Screen Tip Text” field directly below the hyperlink options. When displayed in the help, it looks like the example below. Note the tooltip in the last hyperlink.
