Adobe Technical Communication Suite is here!

Technical Communication,RoboHelp,FrameMaker,Acrobat,3D,Captivate,HAT,Help Authoring,Knowledge Base,Policies and Procedures

This week we announced a new product Adobe Technical Communication Suite and Adobe RoboHelp 7. This takes the total number of technical communication related product releases in 2007 to 6 (RoboHelp 6, Acrobat 3D ver 8, FrameMaker 8, Captivate 3, Adobe Technical Communication Suite, RoboHelp 7). You can imagine the excitement in our team.

Overall, initial feedback has been very positive. At the same time, there have been a few questions and I take this opportunity to answer some of them.

• Can I play Flash files in the Adobe Reader?
• FrameMaker can now include Captivate demos and publish them as part of PDF. When you click a Captivate demo in PDF, the Flash file plays inside the Adobe Reader.
• How is Acrobat 3D different from Acrobat Professional?
• Acrobat 3D is a super set of Acrobat Professional with additional 3D features and 3D toolkit. Acrobat 3D is available as a separate product and you can buy it from (www.adobe.com/products/acrobat 3d)
• How do I generate demos in Captivate?
• Captivate enables creation of professional demos and simulations in a very simple and easy way. During the recording process, Captivate captures a sequence of actions in a software application as a set of slides and mouse movements. It also records text entries and automatically generates text captions (for example, “Click on Open”). You need to try Captivate to realize how easy it is to create professional demos. FYI, in STC Conference at Minneapolis, we exhausted our set of Captivate trial CDs in a couple of hours. Anyone who learned about Captivate, wanted to try it. Now, both FrameMaker and RoboHelp can integrate Captivate demos and publish to PDF and help output respectively. Also, RoboHelp can import Flash files from FrameMaker.
• How do I prepare 3D models for import into FrameMaker?
• Acrobat 3D includes a 3D Toolkit and this should be used to prepare 3D assets for use in FrameMaker. You can now include the actual 3D model in FrameMaker, a significant step forward from working with 2D renditions of these models.
• Do I need to convert FrameMaker documents to .MIF for importing in RoboHelp?
• No. RoboHelp 7 can import .book, .mif and .fm files. In Adobe Technical Communication Suite, you can add FrameMaker files (.book, .fm and .mif) as live links to RoboHelp.

Do let me know your comments and suggestions.

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