#WriteRight 5) FrameMaker & Word: Real Sideheads, seconds vs. minutes with no workarounds!

Sideheads are most frequently seen in a traditional resume. Sideheads, with headings placed in the outer page margins, are relatively easy to accomplish with Microsoft Word, if the heading is only one line long and has no long breaks. Multi-line sideheads in Word are quite another story. This is one feature that stands in stark contrast with FrameMaker 11, which supports “true” sideheads, using a paragraph attribute to place text where you want it.

Unlike Word (or nearly any other product for that matter), FrameMaker has a “sidehead” setting in the Paragraph Designer to automatically place text in the outer margins. You have several choices, including whether you want the sidehead content to line up with its first or last baseline, as seen in the contrasting screen shots below.

0z1 sidehead
https://blogsimages.adobe.com/techcomm/files/2013/03/0z1-sidehead.jpg

0z2 sidehead
https://blogsimages.adobe.com/techcomm/files/2013/03/0z2-sidehead.jpg

Further more, you can change a sidehead back to a normal heading by simply applying a different style. In the example shown above, the selected (black background) sidehead is tagged as Heading 2. In the shot below, we simply inserted our cursor and selected Heading 1 from the Paragraph Catalog.

0z3 sidehead
https://blogsimages.adobe.com/techcomm/files/2013/03/0z3-sidehead.jpg

That’s all it takes is just one click! Most Word users who have tried multi line sideheads are accustomed to multi-step processes like (a) creating a 2 column, 1 row table with the rules turned off, (b) creating boxed text and anchoring it in the outer margin or (c) getting clever by bracketing the sidehead text with section breaks.

The quickest way to understand just how simple this powerful feature is in FrameMaker is to view the brief video below.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/fOL1zL5giK4

Have your own hands-on with FrameMaker 11 and decide how you can use it

Adobe Technical Communication Suite 4 includes FrameMaker 11, which is an excellent authoring solution and also a versatile structured editor for DITA/XML. The possibilities with these new tools are as limitless as the profiles of our existing and potential customers. To discover how you can use FrameMaker, download a trial copy of FrameMaker 11 today. After having your own hands-on, you may decide in favor of the best bargain of all, obtaining a cloud subscription to the entire Tech Comm Suite 4, which includes RoboHelp 10, Captivate 6 and other products in addition to FrameMaker 11.