Considering coming back to Adobe RoboHelp?
Last year the Adobe Marketing team ratcheted up the rhetoric in its bid to steal back users from its rivals. There were e-seminars aplenty on how to leverage Adobe RoboHelp and the Adobe Technical Communications Suite. Then along came a very enticing 40% discount off the price of an Adobe RoboHelp license for anyone swapping back from Madcap Flare, Author-it or Doc-To-Help. That offer is still valid by the way! Then today, John Daigle, President of Evergreen Online Learning, LLC wrote a guest post on the Adobe Technical Communications blog.
Adobe Techncial Communication Suite e-Seminar
At the start of the year one of the regular readers of my blog emailed me asking if I had considered adding podcasts. Well yesterday I took part in an e-Seminar with Tom Aldous, Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite Product Evangelist.
Exactly what is the Adobe Technical Communication Suite?
OK so you’ve bought the Adobe Technical Communications Suite. Chances are you’re decision to purchase it was helped by the need for greater integration between its main components (RoboHelp, FrameMaker, Captivate, Acrobat Pro Extended and Photoshop) or the generous upgrade options that makes the outlay a virtual no brainer if you have two or more of the core applications installed. Next you start the installation, sit back and watch as a plethora of other Adobe applications are added. What is slightly perplexing about this is that they appear to all belong to the Adobe Creative Suite. What gives?
Creatives versus Communicators
These bonus applications are indeed part of the Adobe Creative Suite but Adobe has included them in their Technical Communications Suite and e-Learning Suite. However although they are Creative Suite applications, do not expect the entire Creative Suite. In effect, Adobe has treated them as plugins that can be added seamlessly to other suites where they think it could prove useful to a specific audience.
So what exactly is installed?
Don’t expect a simple answer here. There are differences between what is installed depending on the Technical Communication Suite version you have. Version 2 installs components from the Adobe Creative Suite 4, whilst version 3 installs components from the Adobe Creative Suite 5. However getting newer versions of these applications is only half the story. Some Creative Suite applications have disappeared and others have been added between Technical Communications Suite versions 2 and 3. This all boils down to functionality changes inside the core applications which renders some applications no longer useful or central to technical communicators.
The applications
This table will help you identify the various components installed as part of the Adobe Technical Communications Suite. Note that the Technical Communications Suite 2.5 installed the exact same applications as the Technical Communications Suite 2.
| Application | TCS 2 | TCS 3 | Description |
| Adobe Bridge | Y | Y | Enables file organisation and sharing by providing centralised access to your project files, applications, and settings. It also supports Adobe XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform) which lets you store metadata with files enabling you to find assets by searching on that criteria. |
| Adobe Device Central | Y | Y | Part of the Photoshop installation that offers a way to test output on a wide variety of mobile devices. By creating skins and a library of devices, you can test your layout, content, battery levels, lighting, memory, performance and more. |
| Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit | Y | Y | A scripting tool that forms part of the Photoshop and RoboHelp installations that enables you to create and edit scripts using Adobe’s own scripting language (similar to JavaScript). If a script is created or edited from inside other Technical Communication Suite application (e.g. the RoboHelp Script Explorer pod) it is this application that is launched, but the application can also be used stand alone. |
| Adobe Extension Manager | Y | Y | Part of the Photoshop installation that provides an easy and convenient way to install and delete extensions in Adobe Bridge and Adobe Photoshop applications. It also provides a convenient way to navigate to the Adobe Exchange site. |
| Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES | Y | Y | This is a point-and-click graphical form design tool that simplifies the creation of forms. Particularly useful for those Acrobat Pro forms. |
| Adobe Media Player | Y | Y | Part of the Photoshop installation that provides Adobe’s own media player. The difference here is that it requires you to logon to access your online media library. |
| Adobe 3D Reviewer | Y | N | Another plugin to the Adobe Acrobat Pro application, this can be used to work and review CAD files. In the Technical Communication Suite 3 this is now an integral part of Adobe Acrobat X. |
| Adobe Drive | Y | N | Allows you to connect directly to the Version Cue Server accessed from the Adobe Bridge. This enables you to track and manipulate file versions and metadata. Version Cue has been removed from Technical Communication Suite 3. |
| Adobe Captivate Quiz Results Analyser | N | Y | A results analyzer tool which comes with Adobe Captivate 5. It enables users to analyze course results in a better and an organized manner. |
| Adobe Captivate Reviewer | N | Y | An Adobe AIR application that allows anyone to review and comment on Captivate 5 projects. |
| Adobe Help | N | Y | Another Adobe AIR application that launches Adobe’s Community Help platform for the installed Technical Communication Suite applications. |
| Adobe AIR | N | Y | Part of the Photoshop installation that installs the Adobe AIR runtime environment that enables you to use HTML, JavaScript, Adobe Flash and ActionScript to build web applications that run as standalone client applications without the constraints of a browser. |
| Adobe Fonts Recommended | N | Y | Part of the Captivate and Photoshop installations that installs a set of additional fonts (e.g. for right to left and languages). |
| Adobe PDF Creation Add On | Y | Y | Part of the FrameMaker and RoboHelp installations that enables PDFs to be created. |
| Adobe Media Encoder | N | Y | Part of the Captivate installation that enables encoding of output. |
What if I don’t want these applications installed?
One of the major problems I have with had the Adobe applications in the past is the lack of choice of the way they are installed. Call me old fashioned but I want full control of what is installed and where it is installed on my laptop. I know operating systems like Windows Vista and Windows 7 make searching for applications from the Start menu very easy, but I prefer knowing where to look for what I want. It is almost as if the Google search philosophy is being used to find files on your machine.
In Adobe Technical Communications Suite 2.0 and 2.5 pretty much the only choices you are offered is which of the core applications (RoboHelp, Captivate, FrameMaker, Acrobat Pro Extended and Photoshop) are installed. All the other applications listed above are installed regardless of whether you want them or not. There are methods available to uninstall them but it is not as simple as using the Add / Remove Programs wizard.
In Adobe Technical Communications Suite 3 the install wizard gives you a greater level of control over what is installed. As well as the choices to install the core components, as you select each one an indication is given of what other applications are installed with it. Additionally you can choose whether to install other applications. For example when installing Adobe Photoshop, the Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit and Adobe AIR applications are automatically installed, and you have the option to install the Adobe Extension Manager, Adobe Device Central, Adobe Media Player and Adobe Fonts Recommended applications.
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?
The caring, sharing Adobe TV Technical Communications Channel
Getting back to work after a 16 day vacation is never a pleasant experience. There are all those emails to catch up on and a queue of people wanting your time. As if that wasn’t bad enough, once you get home there is a pile of washing and ironing for a bit of light relief. Amongst the emails to catch up for me today were requests for meetings, project updates and news items from my contacts in the communication industry. One in particular caught my eye.
Adobe has announced the addition of a Technical Communications channel to their online TV network. What this means is that all technical communicators can get free training, inspiration, tips & tricks, interviews and information about Adobe products & services all from one place. However unlike an ordinary TV channel, it enables you to watch what you want, when you want and where you want.
Adobe TV is of course nothing new, it’s been around since 2008, but one of the exciting additions of this channel is the ease with which you can share content. Not satisfied with merely posting episodes, Adobe has added the ability to:
- Save episodes to your own library for viewing later.
- Add comments on the content.
- Embed the video into a blog.
- Share the content on FaceBook, Digg, Del.icio.us and Stumble Upon.
More and more content is being added to the channel in the coming weeks so I’d recommend you subscribe to it. You can find it at:
