RE: What would replace WebHelp?

["Wroblewski, Victoria" <vwroblewski -at- NECsphere -dot- com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: McLauchlan, Kevin
Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2011 10:03 AM
To: John G
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: RE: What would replace WebHelp?


>>>
Anyway, the important part of the criterion that you mention was not that it used frames, but that it gave the user a decent suite of navigation tools, including ToC, Search, linked Glossary, Index, breadcrumbs, etc... and that it did so without need for a server. 
>>>

ToCs, Glossaries, Indexes... all that can be done (at least manually) with straight HTML (which is pretty much what Dreamweaver is, just a word processor-like interface for creating HTML).

The software companies that were all trying for their own proprietary versions of web-based help systems have really missed the boat... I know 10 years ago features that output to straight, basic HTML would have been useful.  Now they are critical.  For example, you can set all those things (but search) in your Framemaker book, but even RoboHelp won't let you output it to a straight HTML format, you have to use all of RoboHelp's custom scripting files are part of the project.  The worst thing about those files is the amount of project bloat - when help is stored on a web server or installed as part of an application it may not be as critical, but when you start talking mobile devices with non-expandable hardware resources, that kind of bloat is unacceptable.  One would think Adobe could get all their product teams on a conference call to figure out how to get something like Frame to Dreamweaver output, but that hasn't happened yet (that I know of).

- V


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