While on maternity leave, I read through the lengthy and informative What’s New in Adobe RoboHelp 6? even though I don’t use RoboHelp. I like to follow Adobe’s treatment of tech pub tools though.
I suppose if I had to pick favorite new features, one would be the Command line compiling for help projects. I do love batch files, and scheduling help builds automatically would be great.
I especially love Rob’s “Emotional Comments” paragraph towards the end of the review. To quote: “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).”
This paragraph is actually the first mention I’ve read of the “newly created suite” of tools. I must go to the Adobe site now and read up on it… Okay, a quick Google search didn’t bring me to the Adobe site but brought me to the blog entries that speculate about such a suite. However, on the Adobe products page, there is a category for eLearning and technical communication products which is an excellent collection of tools.
I’ve also added the Adobe Technical Communication blog to my feed reader, a group blog where they’re keeping the rumors and speculation at bay by simply blogging about it. Way to go, Adobe. This blog is an excellent example ofhaving your product managers use a Web 2.0 communication tool like a blog to field questions and allay concerns.