Adobe announced the release of RoboHelp version 8 last week. In the coming week, I'll be spotlighting some the hot new features... and there are plenty of them. The following is direct from the Adobe site:
Here is what's new:
Publishing Features
Enhanced support for Adobe AIR: Adobe AIR technology provides a revolutionary new help application that provides many new ways for users to find information, add and share comments, in a system that is always up to date. It combines the best of the Web as well as the desktop, whether the user is online or not. Authors can generate this exciting new Adobe AIR help application and package it for easy deployment and management of automatic updates.
Powerful Search engine: Search results are ranked by relevance (with the initial text from the topic displayed for context), search highlighting, a synonym editor and a brand new Keyword Search that can be defined to help the user find what they are looking for. Also added is a way to define search Phrases as well as Substrings. In addition, text in Adobe PDFs and MS Office documents can now be searched.
Enhanced Printed Documentation options: More flexibility in mapping your online output styles to the printed version in Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF.
Breadcrumbs/Mini TOC: Breadcrumb navigation and/or a Mini TOC can be added with placeholders on a topic basis or with Master Pages. If preferred, breadcrumbs can be added globally with a single checkmark when generating output.
Improved Glossary: Edited Glossary definitions are now automatically updated in glossary hotspot links.
Merged Help implementation: Merged project enhancements provide a visually intuitive way to merge child projects which become part of a master TOC.
Twisties: Twisties provide both expanded and dropdown hotspots and can now have configurable images which provide a visual cue to the user.
More author-friendly enhancements
A new Styles and Formatting pod: Quickly apply, create or edit CSS styles.
World class Table, List and Autonumbering: Table designs (with many new prepared templates) can now be created or modified in the Styles editor using a graphical preview and exposed formatting tools. List support now includes enhanced handling of standard HTML Lists, MultiLevel lists and customizable autonumbering.
Easier import of MS Word and Adobe FrameMaker files: Define common Import and Conversion Settings for consistent use of CSS and Style Mapping across all projects.
Linking MS Word files: By linking to MS Word files you can keep your content updated to the original source MS Word document without re-importing each time.
Import DITA: Topic-based content into a RoboHelp HTML project. This allows the DITA author to take advantage of RoboHelp software's rich feature set of TOC, Index, Glossary and advanced publishing options.
IFrame support: Include an external HTML or PDF inside a topic.
Single Sourcing Features
Brand new CSS Editor: Provides a graphical way to define Table Styles, and complex List Styles.
Master Pages (formerly Templates): Help separate layout and styling from content. There are new placeholders for breadcrumbs, a "mini" Table of Contents, and the Body section of each topic.
Resource Manager: Allows you to manage and reuse assets (including Images, Topics, Stylesheets, Multimedia and Snippets) across multiple Robohelp projects.
Formatted User-defined Variables (UDV): Provide a robust way to make global changes to common blocks of content throughout many topics. A major new enhancement is the addition of formatting and the inclusion of such things as images and links which are easily created in a Design and HTML editor.
Productivity Features
Scripting: Automate with built-in scripts or create your own. The entire Adobe Extended Scripting Toolkit CS4 is included with Adobe RoboHelp 8, including many ready-made scripts to get you started.
Integration with other Adobe applications: Adobe Captivate 4, RoboScreenCapture and RoboSource Control are separate applications that are integrated into the Adobe RoboHelp 8 interface.
Custom To Do List: This popular RoboHelp favorite now allows you to edit the supplied tasks and add your own items depending on your own workflows.
Usability Features
Project Manager Enhancements: RoboHelp software's strength has been its ability to help the author keep track of the many assets in a given project. Now, you can drag and drop topics and folders to create the same hierarchy used in the TOC. There is a choice to customize the list of files shown or switch to the traditional view with its virtual folders.
UI Enhancements: Color-coding to show pods with focus, easy close of topics in Design Editor, more tooltips on Navigation buttons and more robust right-click Context Menu support are some of the user-friendly changes to the interface.
Custom File Type mapping dialog: In addition to choosing your preferred HTML editor, there is an enhanced dialog to associate file extensions with your choice of applications.
More functionality added to existing features: Snippets can now be added to Popups and Drop-down hotspots and DHTML effects in non-IE browsers. Because of improved HHActiveX support, Glossaries and Browse Sequences can be included in the HTML Help (.chm) format in Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) multibyte languages.
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We are hard at work on our "Essentials of Adobe RoboHelp 8" book and will soon begin offering virtual training classes on RoboHelp 8. Stay tuned to this newsletter for announcements.
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Not ready to upgrade and need to learn Adobe RoboHelp 7? Click here.
Want to learn more about HTML? Many find it's a good idea for RoboHelp authors to have basic HTML skills. Click here to learn about our basic HTML class.
I am becoming uneasy about the level of technology creeping into RH. The above description ("Adobe RoboHelp 8: Loads of Enhancments") makes me think us Tech Authors need to be full web developers before we can use the product.
This is fine if you're a programmer; but from the hundreds of people I have trained in my Technical Writing Courses, programmers don't always make good tech authors, any more than car mechanics / aircraft designers make good driving / flying instructors. (Sorry guys; but I take my hat off to your programming skills. I could never get my head round programming, even though I was a Software Product and QA Manager for 3 years).
Please remember the "Keep it simple" adage. And while I think of it, buy a copy of "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug; it's the best book I've read about web and software usability design. He'd have a field day with RH7...
Posted by: Philip Tory | February 16, 2009 at 11:58 AM
Hey,
I recently designed a Help Guide in Japanese language. Arial Unicode was the font used all over the help pages. The problem is the .chm file is not opening in a different system.
It is giving a message that some fonts has to be installed.
Can somebody help me out in coming out of this problem.
Regards,
James
Posted by: Account Deleted | April 08, 2009 at 08:43 AM
will RoboHelp 8 support to do Flipping
Posted by: Jayanthi | June 12, 2009 at 02:19 AM
Can be include flash animation in RoboHelp 8
Posted by: Jayanthi | June 12, 2009 at 02:21 AM