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RE: Adobe's New RoboHelp 6 - Rob Houser's Review in WritersUA
Subject:RE: Adobe's New RoboHelp 6 - Rob Houser's Review in WritersUA From:"Ladonna Weeks" <ladonna -dot- weeks -at- comtrak -dot- com> To:"'Barbara Vega'" <BarbaraV -at- libertyims -dot- com>, <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Thu, 8 Mar 2007 13:17:51 -0600
I had to stop using RH when I got Office 2003. I was using "RH
for Word" and 5X wasn't compatible with Word 2003. I still don't
know if RH6 is and I still don't know if it will run with Vista.
They seem to be keeping back a lot of information.
Meanwhile I switched to Doc-to-Help. It's quite powerful but it's
hard to use. It wouldn't be a problem except that I use it only
intermittently and each time I get back to it I have to remember
how to do things.
I'm still considering going back to RH if I can find out whether
it will run under Vista and whether it will work with whatever
the latest version of Word is at the time I am considering the
change.
-----Original Message-----
From: Barbara Vega [mailto:BarbaraV -at- libertyims -dot- com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2007 2:00 PM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Adobe's New RoboHelp 6 - Rob Houser's Review in
WritersUA
Hi all
Rob Houser, a HAT trainer and principal consultant for User
Assistance Group, Inc. writes a detailed and objective evaluation
of the new Adobe RoboHelp 6 in the most recent Writers UA
Newsletter http://www.writersua.com/articles/robohelp_6/index.html#intro. I
have snipped out the last piece which is mostly his "humble
opinions." It is a good read and informative.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
One Man's Humble Opinion
In my opinion, the main challenge for Adobe is to bring new
vision to a tool that has been great in the past but that does
not support many of the new directions in the user assistance
industry. Adobe needs to do more than make RoboHelp better; they
need to allow technical communicators (and subject-matter experts
and even the users) to create and manage user assistance in ways
that aren't already in place today.
Do You Need To Upgrade?
If you already have RoboHelp, you may be asking "Do I really need
to upgrade?" The answer depends on a few questions.
First, can you benefit from any of the new features available in
RoboHelp 6? Hopefully, you already know that from reading this
review.
Second, do you use conditional build tags, RoboSource Control, or
RoboHelp Server? If yes, then you may want to consider upgrading
to take advantage of the enhancements to these features.
If you don't need any of the new features described in this
article, then you may want to sit tight and see what happens in
future releases before you upgrade.
Ultimately, the decision depends on your specific situation and
needs.
About Version Numbers
What's in a number? Adobe refers to this release as RoboHelp 6
(not X6).
By my count, this is the 15th major release of RoboHelp.
I asked the Adobe team to explain why they went with this
numbering system and they cited two reasons: (1) Adobe doesn't
use the X designation in their product names or version numbers,
and (2) many RoboHelp customers think of 6 as the next natural
version number.
<snip>
One Man's Humble Opinion
In my opinion, Adobe should have started RoboHelp over at Version
1.0 to emphasize that this is their first take on the product. Of
course, this is a minor point. The real question is this: Is
RoboHelp 6 a major release deserving a full point increment?
Maybe.
As far as features are concerned, I'd say RoboHelp 6 is really
more of a point release. There are a couple of important
features, but most of the changes won't drastically enhance what
you can create using RoboHelp.
This release is mostly improvements to existing features.
However, RoboHelp 6 is a significant release because it
demonstrates that RoboHelp is still alive-and-kicking, at least
for now, and that's something worth noting.
Emotional Comments
Like many of you, I have had my ups and downs with RoboHelp. I've
enjoyed working with the tool for a long time. (Well, at least
since they worked out most of the bugs in the first seven
releases.) I was surprised and disappointed at the complete lack
of interest demonstrated to our industry by Macromedia. And I
remain cautiously optimistic that Adobe will invigorate the
technical communication community with its newly created suite of
tools (which include RoboHelp, Framemaker, Captivate, and
Acrobat).
I must also confess that I am excited to see competition in the
HAT industry again. Without competition, innovation suffers. I
hope that all of the HATs are able to carve out a niche for
themselves and to expand their business, not through massive
investments in marketing, but through genuine, user-centered
innovation. We're already into the new century but have yet to
see the technology that will create the future of user
assistance.
<snip>
Remote Development Team
It's worth mentioning that the RoboHelp development work is being
off-shored to India. The bulk of the development team is from
India and working in India. Adobe has had success with
applications such as Acrobat being developed in India. The
development team has maintained a high profile in the help
community over the past year, attending the conferences and
interviewing users.
One Man's Humble Opinion
In my opinion, the main challenge for Adobe is to bring new
vision to a tool that has been great in the past but that does
not support many of the new directions in the user assistance
industry. Adobe needs to do more than make RoboHelp better; they
need to allow technical communicators (and subject-matter experts
and even the users) to create and manage user assistance in ways
that aren't already in place today.
<snip>
Much has been made in the public forums about how little Adobe
did with RoboHelp in the first release. While I have to agree
that RoboHelp 6 isn't earth-shattering, I must point out to those
of you who are new to RoboHelp that the tool itself is not new or
short on features. RoboHelp is still the most widely used HAT and
it has several features that make it worth considering.
Support for source control systems which makes it easier and
safer to work with multiple authors on the same project and which
provides you with sequential backups of your changes so you can
rollback to a previous version of any individual file.
Option of RoboHelp Server to monitor and track the questions
users are asking and to allow the help system to search external
documents (DOC, PPT, XLS, PDF) through the same search engine
that searches the help topics.
Availability of FlashHelp to avoid security issues and to
leverage the power of Flash.
Ability to upgrade WinHelp projects to an HTML-based help system.
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