Author-it and MadCap Flare comparison
I’ve had more than a few questions asking for a review of Author-it or MadCap Flare or a comparison of both. So I decided to do some homework. Initially, I wasn’t sure why they are categorized together. Is it due to the price point? Or is it due to the single-sourcing all-in-one software package aspect? I suspect it’s the latter since the former seems more disparate lately.
Let’s examine the single-sourcing aspects.
Both MadCap Flare and Author-it only work on Windows for authoring (but both offer cross-platform and cross-browser output).
Both MadCap Flare and Author-it output to printed and online formats. These formats and the way they arrive at the output offer some differences, as seen in the “publishing aspects” section below.
Both MadCap Flare and Author-it have a single place to store source.
Both are sourced in databases. The single source for MadCap Flare is in a flat folder structure with XML files. MySQL database. The single source for Author-it is in either a free Jet/MSDE/SQL Express database for up to 4 MGB of content, or SQL Server.
Author-it only imports Word documents. Flare imports both Word and FrameMaker documents as projects.
What are the publishing aspects?
Author-it uses Word templates for all printed page layout. If you’re well-versed and experienced in Word for page layout, this product works for you.
Author-it uses CSS for HTML layout, but some layout and graphics are controlled in different areas. I had to uncover the locations for each graphic and CSS area recently while customizing the HTML output for the One Laptop Per Child project. In my experience the HTML layout was all over the place. From templates to stored objects to files stored locally to certain aspects changed within a dialog box on a template, I felt like the online layout was a bit scattered.
Here are links to their Knowledge Center articles that were helpful: Customizing Related Topics in HTML, Adding a Customized HTML Template, and Using a Customized HTML Frameset. I muddled through somehow, and I don’t have a good comparison for MadCap Flare’s HTML output.
Keith Soltys has a nice Review of MadCap Flare from summer of 2007 that shed some light onto the publishing and he speaks highly of the layout rendering nicely in both FireFox and Internet Explorer. It’s interesting, though, that he’s evaluating Author-it as well, so I guess these two products are often compared side-by-side.
Apparently MadCap Flare uses CSS for all layout aspects including print. The new Blaze announcement offers a non-Frame and non-Word reliance for actual PDF or print output. The reliance on CSS (Word’s interpretation of CSS has its limits) may have forced MadCap to create Blaze. Anyone else think you should wait for the CSS 3.0 specification before really nit-picky print layouts can be accomplished? Or is CSS ready for this level of design? I know with the OLPC project, we’d love CSS layout for really nice ebooks, so maybe MadCap is onto something with CSS for print layout.
I’ve written up this comparison because many people have asked me for it, but I know it’s lacking. Please, feel free to fill in the gaps that this post has so that others may fairly evaluate each tool in their environment.
I had an email conversation with Kai many months ago, who was a good sport with all of my questions regarding the content and priorities with that content. He realized, though, that Author-it was probably eliminated due to its use of SQL Server – they wanted a MySQL database container for their content. So I figured that MadCap was their final answer. It is so interesting how the final decision can be dictated by the underlying system requirements. One of the commenters on Gordon Mclean’s post, Why AuthorIT? (sic, they’re now Author-it) was seeking a similar authoring tool but on a Mac platform.
Sorry Kai for dropping the conversation for so long. But please do share your experience with the tools since then.
Anne Gentle is the author of 
I work for MadCap
Just want to clarify that we do not store content in any database. It’s a flat folder structure with XML files. We do use SQL for storing information used in analysis of the content (reporting, etc) but we store no *content* in a database.
We also use the full CSS standard and do every single print publishing thing you can think of, using CSS. And then some.
Finally, Blaze is the print output part of Flare, broken into a separate tool so that people who don’t need online outputs can get the functionality they need. Everything Blaze does, Flare does and Flare adds online outputs/features. So, if you only need print->Blaze. If you need print and online->Flare.
Hi Sharon, thanks for stopping by and clarifying. I’ve updated the post with strike-throughs where necessary. I appreciate your comment and involvement with the blogging community.
Plus you’re fun to follow on Twitter.
Anne, one thing about Authorit … it can import files other than Word. I’ve imported MIF and .rtf and .html into my Authorit source, so with some initial headaches, it’s actually pretty easy to do a mass import of content from other sources.
Authorit’s output to print, however, is a complicated story if you are not a fan of Word (and I’m not). If Open Office Writer can do a darned good Export to PDF, why can’t this heavier-priced product (Authorit)? Well, that last part probably qualifies as a mini-rant, but still, it bugs me.
Thanks!
Virginia
Thanks for noting the review of Flare I did a while back. I’ve also done a review of Blaze, and it’s available on my blog at this URL: http://www.soltys.ca/coredump/2009/01/madcap-blaze-powerful-alternative-to.html
I should note that I’m not evaluating Author-It any more. I decided that it didn’t suit my needs. If I switch away from FrameMaker/WebWorks, it’ll likely be to Flare.
Yes, the “wrong” DB actually did eliminate Author-it from the race. We went with MadCap Flare, and we were extremely happy with it. Not to say it’s a flawless tool, but the combination of “open everything” files which allows you to fiddle with templates, the well-run and helpful forum and dedication to improve on MadCap’s side just made it about the most pleasant professional software experience. (I didn’t receive anything to say this – I even had to specifically ask for a free t-shirt at the trade fair…
)
Since we didn’t have a lot of legacy content, I manually migrated Word paragraphs into Flare, chunking the content as I went along. We defined the deliverables we wanted (sometimes on the fly to satisfy marketing or pre-sales on short notice) and created web help and PDF. The initial layout of PDFs/Word did take some time, but much of it was spent on the last 10%, to get from quite pretty to near perfect.
I’m writing in the past tense because I’ve since moved on to a different company. And again, the sys reqs come into play: Since we’re looking at huge amounts of legacy content and a distributed network of writers, we will be watching closely how Flare’s flat folder structure behaves over the network and in terms of build times.
Hi Anne
Some points of clarification…
* Author-it imports many file types — Word, RoboHelp, FrameMaker (MIF), RTF, WinHelp, CHM, HTML, XML, among others
* The database limits for the free JET/MSDE/SQL Server Express options are Microsoft limits, not Author-it limits. And I think it’s 4 GB for SQL Server Express, not 4 MB… I have SQL Express libraries well over 250 MB! SQL Server is a paid option, with this limit removed.
* Author-it’s default CSS can be modified within the style objects. Or you can create a custom CSS and custom HTML templates to do whatever you want. Customizing is more for someone reasonably familiar with HTML and CSS. You don’t need to know anything about CSS or HTML to get HTML output ‘out of the box’ if you’re happy with the defaults and don’t want to tweak.
Hope this helps
Rhonda Bracey, Author-it Certified Consultant
Thanks Rhonda for these details – I really appreciate it! I’ll update the post.
Thanks Kai, good to hear of your experiences. I do hope your large amount of content holds up to the test.
Keith, your posts are extremely helpful, mine pale in comparison!
Hi Virginia – I am sooo lucky that Mary Connor does all our Word work at ASI. While I can read and write Word macros it’s certainly not my first choice to do in a given workday.
Hi Anne, a few comments on this article. I’m working with Flare at the moment but I’m a big fan of Author-it and miss it badly! I’m also an Author-it Consultant but do my best to be impartial.
I think it unconventional to apply the idea of ‘single-source’ to mean the source files instead of the output options.
Rhonda, you didn’t mention that the MS SQL Express is free. To put 4Gb into context, in a recent project, on an earlier version of Author-it (4.5), 2Gb was more than enough for 5 authors for 2 years _with_ a large legacy import from the previous 10 years.
As for customizing HTML output in Author-it being confusing… yes it is BUT, all you need is a good map. I created a map of how the media objects feed the template objects feed the front-page, toc, body and index output and used that as a guide while I worked. Then it was easy. Author-it don’t provide such a map and I keep meaning to suggest it to them.
You do mention a couple of times a confusion over why Author-it and Flare are compared and I have to agree. To me, Author-it is, above all else, a component content management system (CCMS) which can start small (single author) and grow huge, with support for team authoring, sharing, reuse, management … Flare are developing team server but I can’t imagine it even approaching Author-it’s dominance in this field.
Richard Pineger, Tech Doc Direct Limited
Hi Anne,
I work for Author-it. Some of our users have provided feedback above which is great (and I’d love a copy of Richard’s map) but I’ll clarify where a lot of evaluators see the difference between Flare and Author-it.
Author-it is built on a CMS so many of the functions of a CMS are provided:
- authentication
- permissions (who can do what, when, and from where)
- workflow
- remote contribution (web or windows)
- localization management
- visualization and management of your entire documentation set
For end users the Xtend tool is becoming invaluable, making re-use automatic. For larger clients the Author-it API is important – they can link other systems directly into the Author-it CMS. The single source publishing engine also provides many different ways to publish output, using our own engine or a third party (even the ODT if you feel inclined). We have clients that publish to Frame, Flash and InDesign for example.
Finally, Author-it’s licencing is concurrent, so the software can be installed on any number of PCs (or delivered via a standard web browser). Sales teams, HR, Operations and other SMEs all create and review content directly, and based on each person’s user account the software ‘switches off’ Author-it functions that aren’t appropriate to their role.
Hope this helps.
Matt Armstrong
Author-it Software Corporation
Matt, thanks so much for these important distinctions that evaluators have pointed out. Very useful, thanks!
Thank you for this. I didn’t read it very deeply the first time around, but I just won (yes won!) a free copy of Author-it at this month’s STC meeting. I know! It’s very exciting but a whole new world for this Frame gal.
This is very helpful! I’m looking up all your other articles on Author-it!
Oh! And, I’m glad you’re healing so well.
Matt Armstrong:
Finally, Author-it’s licencing is concurrent, so the software can be installed on any number of PCs.
Doesn’t that depend on the license? Since the license I’m using doesn’t even allow the same person to work on two pc’s. Once I move the authorit file to an other pc, I can’t use it anymore. I believe the way AuthorIT licenses work are quite confusing.
Is this thread still open for addl comments/questions? We are very interested in this topic, as we are in the midst of just such a comparison.
Absolutely, feel free to ask or comment.
Hi Anne,
I work for Author-it also. This post has been very good in clearing up some of the comparison issues. I just would like to clarify the licensing questions. Author-it licensing is ‘server-based’. This means the licensing is attached to the library (database) and this is how concurrent users are measured. If you have a single license you can install in many workstations but will still only be able to access the database one person at at time. If for example you add 2 more users then a total of 3 users will be able to access the database concurrently.
I hope this clarifies the license issue. Other licensing that is not user-based is also attached to the database, which adds that particular given functionality (ie. Author-it Xtend).
On the topic of licensing, I heard from another writer that if you are doing localization, a separate Author-It library is required for each language, and that each such library purchased separately; so if you need to translate into 17 languages, as the writer I spoke with does, the cost for Author-It becomes (at least for her company) prohibitively high. Can anyone confirm/correct this understanding? Thx.
Hi Bernie,
If a client wants the full localization automation then a separate licence is required for each translated language, yes.
Clients don’t need this for localization, though, so if an organisation is small and only translates occasionally they can do so in the same way they did previously and not purchase any additional licences, can provide their translators access to their content for free (see Mark’s comments about concurrent licencing, above), keep their translated content alongside their source content, single-source their translated content, and use Author-it multi-channel publishing for translated content as well.
However, if a client spends tens of thousands of dollars or more per year on translation, Author-it localization automation will save them between 30% – 80% of this cost (check the Author-it case studies – one client saved $500,000 on their first Author-it-based translation job and spent less than 10% of that on Author-it licences). Please ask your friend how much her company spends on localization every year? Is 50% savings of that cost more than the cost of localization licences?
Sorry if this sounds terse. ‘Prohibitively’ is so subjective, especially when localization budgets usually dwarf the budget for tools.
Thanks, Matt, for the clarification. I will ask about their localization expenses.
I would like to interview people who have been using AI in a production environment, including localization, for a year or more. Can any of you help me make such contacts? Much thanks!
Hi Bernie,
Best place to start is on the Author-it User Group: http://my.author-it.com
Hope this helps.
Matt A
Bernie,
As Matt said, the AuthorIT user forum would be a good place to get more information. There’s a few of us active in the Localisation Manager area of the forum who have been using AIT and LM for some time, as well as some users doing localisation without LM.
We’ve been using AIT and LM for about 5 years now.
Thx, I just registered and will poke around…
My department is using RoboHelp right now and would like to migrate to a new tool. We are having a problem with multiple writers using one RH project at a time. We are looking at Author-It and also Flare. Have any of you migrated from RH to either of these? How was the migration? Suggestions?
I haven’t migrated from RoboHelp to either of those systems, but I do know of at least two successful moves from RH to Confluence, a wiki product from Atlassian that’s ideal for collaborative authoring. Read through this case study and see what you think. http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/casestudies/gigaspaces.jsp. Also see Gina Fevrier’s write-up in the 2010 STC Summit proceedings.
Thank you so much. I will look into these.
Kathryn (if you’re still looking):
I’m a certified consultant/trainer with both RoboHelp and Author-it, and was with Flare (tho not for a while). I’ve helped a number of clients migrate from tool to tool. Most common: when they run against the limits of a file-based tool (like RH or Flare) designed essentially for single users (with server work-arounds). In both kinds of cases, moves to Author-it do involve a learning curve of some sort, because Author-it is a database tool, a content management system, and a work tracking system. But in the end they find agreeable the greater flexibility, control, and even simplicity in the data-based system.
Hello all
Want to weigh in on this, as I’m a fairly new Flare user and a long-time user of Authorit to manage large projects and import legacy content.
There are some serious issues with Flare, and I’m going to submit requests and see what happens between now and when our maintenance is up for renewal.
The largest one is that creating separate TOCs in Flare, kind of equivalent to books in Authorit, does not work as expected. When publishing, every topic in the project can be found by searching, tho they don’t show up in the TOC or navigation. To avoid this requires setting conditions on every single TOC collection. This very much defeats the purpose of single-sourcing for me, as I want to be able to create & publish subsets or supersets of content quickly. To create conditions for each grouping is incredibly complicated, and I’ve already got a long list of conditions that are hard to keep track of.
Another is that for each output in Authorit, you more or less define things in a single place, within an object. Yes, you have to set up your Word template, but this gives better output and more control than what Flare can produce in Word. In Flare, you have to create a Target, assign a skin, and point to a TOC for each output. In Authorit, the book object is a collection of topics, in a TOC, and everything’s defined there. Tho there is a css for html (which you can modify directly) and a template for Word, this seems much more intuitive.
Also, there are no style toolbars, and you have to either open the styles or choose from a list each time you want to apply a style. There’s no way to order this list so what you use most frequently is near the top. Both these features are available in Authorit and improve usability a lot.
I’ve also found importing documents into Flare more confusing and producing less desirable results than in Authorit. Fortunately, in this company I am mostly creating new content, but this would be a big consideration in projects I’ve run in the past where I imported thousands of pages of Frame, Word, and LotusNote files.
One more thing – if you want non-technical people to use, Flare is simply not a good idea. It is a steep learning curve, with lots of issues (tho Authorit certainly has its issues as well). I’ve trained complete non-tech, non-authors in Authorit to do the maintenance after finishing a project, and have confidence they can do what they need to do. This would not be possible in Flare. period.
Hope this helps someone, much of this was not transparent until I started using Flare.
Hello all,
very interesting discussion.
i´m in process of decision making about what tool is the right one for us.
needs:
1. multi editor
2. revisioning
3. output as pdf, help, indesign, output to website
4. want to generate technical data sheets, descriptions, catalogues, marketing colateral etc.
what tool would be best for that ?
i have robohelp, flare & author-it in evaluation right now, but to make the right decision is not an easy task.
just forgot to say want to store graphics etc in sharepoint.
I am interested in this discussion as well. I am researching HATs that have internal editors. I have only ever used RoboHelp (long, long ago), ePublisher (ditto), and Flare (2008-2009).
My experiences with Flare (I used versions 3 and 4) were quite different from Cayenne’s. To me, Flare was highly intuitive and I was able to produce good output very quickly. I know CSS and HTML, however, so I was able to edit the style sheet and the underlying code directly when I had problems with the WYSIWYG editor.
For our purposes, I am not sure we need a CMS, though I would love to learn how to use Author-It anyway just to see what all the fuss is about. What we do need is a robust help tool that imports a wide range of file types (which Flare does) and produces a wide range of outputs (which Flare does), including context-sensitive help (which is our primary need at the moment). We also need to be able to create content within the tool as well.
For most of the content, authors will be using Word and I will be bringing those files into the tool to generate the help, but the original source files must remain as they are, so that when they are updated, I can just bring in the updated version. My understanding is that I can do that in Flare, but that in Author-It, once the content is in the tool, it stays there, which would mean getting licenses for every author. That isn’t going to happen, at least not yet and not for a long while.
In summary, we have multiple authors with just one person (me) creating online help form Word source files that will be updated repeatedly.
Having said all that, I have some questions.
1. Can anyone tell me whether RoboHelp will bring in files, but remain linked to the source files, so when the sources are changed, RoboHelp updates the help? (That’s how ePublisher worked.)
2. Can anyone tell me whether RoboHelp also has an internal editor?
3. Can anyone tell me whether Author-It could be used in an environment where only one person was using it, bringing in Word source files which will be updated many times in their Word form?
Many thanks for any clarifications or help!
Hi Marina,
I’ll jump in with some quick answers for your Author-it questions (I’m from Author-it Software).
Author-it licences are concurrent – you can install the software on as many PCs as you want and have as many user accounts as you want. You only pay for the number of simultaneous users.
You can import Word documents into Author-it, and it is also possible to re-import the same Word file, as per your question. When you do this Author-it simply updates the existing internal Author-it Topics with the changed content from the Word file.
Another example of collecting non-Author-it user content is outlined here: http://www.author-it.com/blog/2009/05/10/collaboration-plus-collaboration-for-those-who-dont-want-to/
Matt A
Hi Wolf,
I’ve just checked your message in this thread. You mention publishing to a website and InDesign. Do you mean publishing to a full WebCMS, or more simply, uploading your online content to a static web location? The Author-it publishing engine has a couple of integrations into WebCMS systems. The full Author-it website is one example, and you can download Author-it’s DotNetNuke plug-in from the Author-it developer site.
As for InDesign, can you please outline your requirements in a bit more detail – are you looking for complex layout, or pre-press finishing, or just like InDesign?
Regards
Matt A
Dear Matt,
regarding Indesign
we produce our marketing colateral, catalogues … with indesign.
It is grafically diffult content.
The web probelm is right now secondary to me.
Regards,
Wolf
Hi Mariana,
about Robohelp:
you can do all of the things that you described.
1. Can anyone tell me whether RoboHelp will bring in files, but remain linked to the source files, so when the sources are changed, RoboHelp updates the help” ==> Yes, works well
2. Can anyone tell me whether RoboHelp also has an internal editor?
==> yes, works well
I feel the presence of so many Author-it employees or current/former sales reps is seriously coloring the discussion here, so I have chosen to respond.
About me, I have been a technical communicator for 10+ years. Most of that time, my primary tool has been FrameMaker (versions 6 through 9), though in that time I have touched almost everything from Epic to Quark to Word, the whole Adobe suite, web development tools, wikis and WordPress, and so on. I have not used Flare, but would not want to after my Author-it experience.
I have two working experiences with Author-it shops, one as an employee in a department with 5 co-writers, and one as a near-consultant (I turned down the job). In both cases, the companies regretted their choice of Author-it, and were trying to undo the damage. Here “damage” mostly means the costly time-sink that comes with Author-it, once you’ve spent a year or two authoring content.
Reasons are legion. As one of the team writers using Author-it, I can tell you that the daily agonies of Author-it were constant. The tool itself is as non-intuitive as they come (maybe Flare is worse? it would be hard to beat Author-it, I shudder), the non-wysiwyg authoring interface–which is what we writers stare at all day long, of course–is often misleading, bug-ridden, or flat out broken. The tool freezes and crashes often, odd behavior is commonplace. There are many bugs related to formatting, spacing, table styles and the like, especially when using embedded objects. Word output is generally a disaster, as there is almost always a style mismatch or general glitch in Word that results from some issue mentioned above. Heaven forbid you need to do a global change of some sort, as stunningly, this is not even possible in many cases.
Another point is that the Author-it database is proprietary, so you cannot query it or otherwise make it useful to your organization–this is your own content mind you. The company is a small outfit (I almost said rinky-dink) in New Zealand, offers quite poor support, even to enterprise customers, and a real-life response to one of our queries (it might be common, actually, if you search their support forum) was to “zip up your database and FTP it to us so we can debug it for you”. I think finding a local expert or a labor pool in your area that has Author-it experience is a crap shoot. Author-it seems to be a learn-by-pain experience from what I can tell.
I have spent enough time with Author-it to know that I never want to go near it again, and all my co-workers felt the same way. The words “pain” “torture” “time-suck” and “hairball” were often used in our workplace. Even Word has not engendered as much tool-hatred as Author-it, and that’s saying something. I compare the pain/hatred level with what I heard being tossed around in 2001 regarding StarOffice. A few months with Author-it and getting over the learning-curve pain, I became familiar with the feeling that I was using a database with a poorly functioning text editor interface stuck on top.
That final sentence is the essence of my review,
The post by “dave b” contains errors, exaggerations, mis-statements. The tone and tenor, lack of specifics and large generalizations remind me of guerilla marketing from old eHelp and early Flare: forged web sites, “disinterested” reviewers, hatchets anonymous. As for the assertions: not worth my time to call them all out nor yours to read, but a few items can illustrate the point.
“…so many Author-it employees or current/former sales reps….” Matt Armstrong and Mark Trotter identify themselves as Author-it employees. Three consultants in the list (including me) are independent; at least two of us are certified in several tools, but as far as I know, no former sales types.
“…non-wysiwyg authoring interface…” Author-it publishes to multiple outputs; like any multi-output tool, the editor cannot presume any one is primary. Author-it’s editor is fast, completely style-controlled, and stable. The UI is, for the most part, conventional. No examples offered, for example, of “odd behavior.”
“…Word output is generally a disaster…” Word’s no fun game, for sure, but Author-it reaches into Word more deeply and with more detail control than any of the dozen or so tools I’ve worked with.
Those last paragraphs…wow. My guess: the company that failed to benefit from the Author-it consulting expertise of “dave b” should consider itself fortunate.
I’ve come to realize that Author-it evokes strong feelings like dave b’s and I’m still not sure why. His tirade gives less than I’d hoped because, like David Locke says, it is inaccurate. If it is inaccurate, that makes it an emotional response and not a rational one and we need to know what causes the emotional response. Usability trials would possibly be more enlightening and give some hard data to work with.
I still love Author-it for its ease of use. I say that because I’m working with the alternative which is DITA XML and an XML CMS system. Working with these systems can help you to understand the complexity that Author-it successfully covers up.
Hi All,
I stumbled upon this discussion while doing some research on tools, and had no intention of commenting until I got to dave b’s post.
I am not, nor have I ever been, an Author-it employe or an Author-it Certified Consultant. I am, however, someone who has been technical writing for close to twenty years and who has tried many of the available tools, including RoboHelp, Author-it, and Madcap Flare. I have used Author-it as both a sole writer and as part of a writing team since 2000, when I purchased my first copy after seeing a demo at an STC conference. I have also migrated huge projects from RoboHelp to Author-it.
In my experience, those who rage the most against any tool, including Author-it, are those who are frustrated at having to learn a new tool or a new approach to authoring. Posts such as dave b’s are also the least credible for people serious about learning more about a tool.
Every tool has its strengths and weaknesses. Like any tool, Author-it can be frustrating at times. In my opinion, however, Author-it has an excellent approach to authoring and content management. Like all the other tools, Author-it continues to evolve.
Regrettably, Author-it’s different approach to authoring and the complexity of the product–not in terms of usability, but possibilities–make it easy prey for individuals who don’t want to take the time to learn about the tool, but are quick to write it off. If you are seriously considering a new authoring tool, I believe you owe it to yourself and your clients to learn more about Author-it and its capabilities.
Best of luck in finding the right tool for you and your organization.
My comments were about ease of use for completely non-technical users – with Flare, it would not be possible to train folks quickly. Yes, I can modify css and html and xml, but in Author-it I rarely needed to. In Flare, I had to try every which way to get the text to do what it should have done based on the style I set – esp lists, blockquotes, tables, etc.
I’ve done several very large change management projects using Author-it, and found the time from import to publish was very fast – and companies were impressed as well.
Most of our tools are expensive and buggy, which is unfortunate to say the least. Author-it had a lot of problems when I started using it, and they continued – but fixes also continued. And, after using Flare for a couple years, the bugs just don’t compare.
Flare has many ways to do things, but not all of them work, and there’s no map or help on the relationships, nor the best practice – where to do what tasks. So you can mess around in all the many options and still not know exactly what effect it’s having, nor the best way to do it.
Granted, I know Author-it, but I know Flare too now, and find the relationships between different controls very confusing. There are settings you can adjust that have no impact, because they are ‘supposed’ to be set somewhere else.
In my experience, Author-it just handled things, and yes covered up a lot of complexity – but I could still get as deep into as I wanted. I just didn’t need to often.
The most emotional posts seem to come from people switching from linear, old-style tools, from what I’ve seen here. Just saying…
Flare just came out with an update. Can anyone let me know if that fixed bugs?
Hi Kristen –
Here’s a link to the v8 release notes with a list of bug fixes:
http://kb.madcapsoftware.com/Content/Flare/General/GEN1032F_-_FlareV8_Release_Notes.htm
Others may want to give their thoughts on the update.
As a user of Author-it for the past 4 years I have to say that after a slow start I became a convert. Its emphasis on topic-based documentation is ideal for info re-use and content structuring.
The word output did present some challenges at first but if you’re reasonably familiar with MS word they’re all surmountable. Making a map of the relationships between media and topic templates is something I did at an early stage and it paid off. Author-it doesn’t offer a lot of follow-up information online so you need to experiment to get the most of the features.
It looks however that the tech writer teams are now moving to RoboHelp V 9.0 for all our product lines and so I’ll have to leave Author-it behind me and move on. I remember hearing about Flare, but I’ve never had the opportunity to use it.
A recent post muses about why writers might find the Author-it interface lacking. As a writer who with 12 years of experience working with FrameMaker, perhaps I can give some useful insight.
Coming from a wysiwyg environment, I find the lack of page number visibility in Ait’s interface a big time waster. We give large Word manuals to review teams and the helpful reviewers refer to page numbers for their comments. When I’m endeavoring to work in the Ait editing tool I have no page numbers to steer by. This forces me to constantly hunt through the TOC to find the topic. I MUST have a printout of the manual open as I do this to minimize the hunting so I can perform my work.
The Ait search function is not intuitive when it comes to locating topics or phrases that happen to be in a “book” that is part of a larger “book”. This took over an hour to discover while my revision deadline loomed.
Given that I can’t see page numbers and the search funtion is clugy, well, that just makes revision work a real chore. Too bad that sort of work happens toward the end of a writing project when time is precious.
If I never had to work with Author-it again, I’d be much happier.
Hi Steve,
I work with Author-it and have been using the product since 1999. I truly understand the hassle you are going through at the review stage in your workflow. Author-it identified this as an issue a few years ago and has since launched a new product (ironically called the ‘Author-it Reviewer) to help smooth out this process.
The Author-it Reviewer helps automate the review process so that review teams and editors are in the loop by using a web-based reviewer to enter their information or comments. You as the manager of this process can accept, incorporate or remove these. All information feeds directly to the database. If you want to have a test of this system your Author-it account manager will be able to set this up for you.
I think all tools have their limitations and Author-it is no different. It is not a WYSIWYG editor but this is how it manages to publish to so many outputs and integrate with other systems. There are pros and cons of any tool but the most important thing is that the producer of that tool is focused on continuous improvement. I believe that Author-it takes this approach and the Author-it Reviewer (and more recently Author-it Cloud) are good examples of this.
I have been a technical writer for many years. I have used Word and FrameMaker. I implemented a full CMS plus Arbortext editor, which was the standard single-sourcing toolset – in the broadest sense. I then moved on and implemented Author-it in another company. I know run my own business and evaluated tools for a start-up company who will need localization and multiple outputs. The result of the evaluation was Flare, chosen for its ability to handle localization of multiple languages on a small scale without heavy costs, it’s ability to output high quality PDFs and web help without too much effort, and the possibility of a certain amount of content reuse.
I understand the rant about Author-it. Some of it is justified. For example, the search and replace function does not find all instances. We also experienced unexplained crashes, particularly at the beginning, while importing large documents from FrameMaker. The PDF output is frustrating by comparison with Flare. It is done through a Word template and we spent a lot of money having macros written, some of which was just to get numbering to work correctly.
On the other hand, Flare also has its downside. I was able to produce acceptable PDF output very quickly, but there are still small issues which I have not yet ironed out. Others have said that you need to know CSS to make the best of Flare. That is absolutely true. I am a CSS novice, which is probably why I am still struggling with some things.
If you need content reuse and don’t want to invest in a full CMS/XML system then I think that Author-it is a good choice. It is definitely easier to use than the non-integrated toolset which I originally used, although I believe there are better systems out there.
If you want a really good system to output to a range of help/web and print types, then I would choose Flare. Flare made a big step forward on useability with its V8 release. I am looking forward to improved reuse functionality in future.
No way to edit what I wrote before it is published. Three oopses!
..standard single-sourcing toolset in the company…, I now run…, its not it’s.
Thanks! Jo.
Can anyone one tell me why one should move from Robohelp to Author it
I would also like to know what will be maintenance and license cost difference for Robohelp and Author it.
Is it one time license or we need to pay for modifying and maintaining help for new author/user.
I would be really helpful if you could provide your me these details and share your experience about major reason for choosing the HAT.
Thanks in advance.
Dhanashree, I’m not directly answering your question. Instead, here’s a link to a searchable database that produces side-by-side comparisons of various help authoring tools. This site is most useful if, before you use it, you create a prioritized list of features that you want.
http://hat-matrix.com/
I have used Author-it in my line of my work and found it an excellent tool. Of course you may have the odd difference between the tools but what separated AIT from RoboHelp is its component content management and ability to generate help without any broken links. It is a dependent tool and is a great investment to make. You can write to me at , and if required I can put you in touch with Author-it India contact.
Hi Dhanashree,
Thanks for taking interest in Author-it software. I am with Author-it Corp based in India, Bangalore, and would be pleased to organize a demonstration and evaluation for you very quickly. We are happy to conduct a free demonstration/tutorial to show you around Author-it as which will make your evaluation process much easier. Also, you can search our online Knowledge Centre and Watch videos and tutorials on our YouTube channel.
Links: http://kc.author-it.com/#b45748t24310n18719
To Steve Winter:
Your situation is geared totally toward a Word/document output. Pages and page numbering are totally irrelevant for those producing output to the web, and even WYSIWYG doesn’t mean a lot when CSS takes over the graphical control of content piped to a browser.
If you are steering your content exclusively by page numbers, then it appears to me that:
a) you have not grasped how systems like Flare and Author-it operate, and
b) you are still stuck in a document-centric paradigm from the past that has been surpassed by much improved workflow situations other than for working with MS Word, which in all honesty, is an awful application to work with.
Others have understood the concepts that these applications are about. But it seems you haven’t.