Well, it may be only a one-month contract to start - but it is so nice to be working in-house for a large company again. After a close-to 10 month hiatus working at home, and working via the Internet for small companies with only my family and cat as daily consultants, albeit, with the fantastic input of people via techwr-l, I'm back in an office environment working with people who WANT my help.

As part of my testing of Help & Manual, I wanted to see how well the variables work. I have learned that while the use of variables is a very powerful and useful tool, there is one instance where there could be difficulties. Most people will not face this issue. However, if you need formatted variables, in particular, Small Caps, please read on.

I finally found time to work with the Print Manual Designer in Help & Manual.

This is a feature that provides a great deal of flexibility. As with any tool, I strongly recommend that you read the online Help first, and work through Help & Manual's tutorial for this.

If you have graphics that will be part of the DTP (usually logos for company branding), do make sure they are resized appropriately, and saved as BMP, EMF, or WMF files.

I spent some time reading through the Help files, trying to find a simple way to edit the look and appearance of my help files. At first I kept missing it. Finally, I realized that the instructions meant what they said. That is, open the examples provided and follow the instructions there. I did that, and wow–I moved on to customization very quickly.

I was pleased to see that I did indeed receive a response from Help & Manual service and support within 24 hours.

Their response was excellent. They explained that I could not search and replace for links, per se, but did advise how I could do this. They explained how to do this in the XML files, and suggested a tool that would help me to do this.

I started by taking my imported project and trying to use the search and replace for different options. I really like the variable feature. I created a variable for company names which could change from project to project. Search and replace for variables worked like a dream. In addition, instructions were easy to follow. I like the interface more and more. There is a lot to take in, but whenever I click commands that have work screens associated with them, instructions are displayed as well, with links to related help.

Downloaded and installed Help & Manual today. I was stunned by how quickly it downloaded, and how painlessly it was installed. I was very impressed by the interface. I had to review a few other Help software programs back in October, for another company.

The only Help software that I looked at that came close to being as simple as this, was Flare V9… but truth be told (and I really liked Flare), I am stunned by how quickly I was able to get up and running with Help & Manual.

Well, having finished my last contract position, it has taken me a few days to get everything set up to officially work from home, but I'm hoping to get started soon.

I've been working on a website to help others, and hopefully draw attention to my capabilities, still under development. I had no idea how much work all this is! But it's been good to brush up on my HTML and PHP hacking skills.

OK, I admit, I am probably just discouraged.

In my last long-term job of 10 years, things reached a point where everyone said, "you know the topic better than we do" and I received little or no corrections. Or there was the typical product change with tons of corrections the day after the document got signed off... the usual.

I've been contracting in a different locality, and am stunned...