FrameMaker 12 Update released (FM 12.0.3)

Hello Framers,

Hope all of you are doing well. I am pleased to announce that we have released an important update to the Technical Communication line of products which includes FrameMaker 12, FrameMaker XML Author 12 and RoboHelp 11. In this update, we have made several enhancements as well as addressed many issues, reported by our customers and partners. In this post, I will be covering the enhancements and bug fixes for FrameMaker 12 and FrameMaker XML Author 12 only. For the update on RoboHelp 11, please read the other blog here.

Here is the list of enhancements that we have made to FrameMaker 12 & FrameMaker XML Author 12.

Responsive HTML5 output is now faster and better! (FM Only)

Responsive HTML5 publishing is one of the key features in FM12, and we have made it better in this update. We have added several new features and enhanced the HTML5 output performance. Some of the notable improvements are:

  1. We have cleaned up the generated HTML5 output. Every HTML file is now about 20KB smaller in size, which means that for every 100 files, the size of the final output is reduced by 2 MB. Moreover, the generated HTML5 is much cleaner.
  2. We have enhanced the loading performance of the HTML5 output. Based on our tests, the average loading time of the output is reduced by 50%.
  3. The overall consumption experience of the HTML5 output is enhanced. For example, the transitions from topic to topic, and Search and TOC navigation are smoother and there is no flicker.
  4. The other big enhancement is that now, the state of the TOC is maintained, which means that if you have a book opened in the final output, the book will remain in the open state for the entire session. You can also have multiple books in open state at the same time.
  5. You can now import a Responsive HTML5 layout in the settings file. This means that you don’t need to repeatedly customize layouts in multiple settings file.
  6. And we have also released a brand new Responsive HTML5 layout

Theme3_Black

Additional publishing enhancements (FM Only)

  1. FrameMaker 12 can now publish the content in the reference pages as well for all non-PDF outputs.
  2. The non-PDF publishing for large files with many images is now faster with 50% reduction in publishing time.

Integration with other Adobe products would work without TCS license

In this update, we have enabled several cross-product workflows, which were available only in Technical Communication Suite earlier. So, if you are not a TCS user, but have other Adobe products such as Acrobat, RoboHelp, or Captivate installed on your computer, you will now be able to

  1. Link FrameMaker documents in RoboHelp project.
  2. Insert Captivate Videos.

Structure View Enhancements

We made the following enhancements to the Structure View

  1. In the structure view, now you can drag and drop within an empty element as well
  2. If the user drags and drop an element to a collapsed element, it is automatically expanded
  3. A visual indication is provided when performing an element drop to highlight whether the drop is valid, invalid, or not allowed.
  4. The structure view now comes with a compact mode in which the text within the elements are displayed alongside the elements instead of being right aligned. The mode can be switched on or off using a flag in maker.ini
  5. You can now expand or collapse all child elements or attributes of an element, including nested elements.
  6. You can now navigate the element hierarchy in the Structure View while working in the document. Each time the user selects an element in the document, the Structure View is expanded to the corresponding element in the hierarchy.
  7. Visually get an indication of my position in Structured View corresponding to my position in document view, even when some nodes in SV are collapsed.

Table Enhancements

Workign with tables just got a lot better:

  1. You can now right-click on a table to insert a table continuation variable.
  2. You can add a new row at the end by pressing the TAB key in the last cell of the table.
  3. You can also drag-and-drop the rows and columns of a table within the table.
  4. You can easily navigate in the table cells using right, left, up, and downarrow keys

CMS Connector Enhancements

  1. FrameMaker 12 now supports SharePoint 2013. Also, Claim-based authentication for SharePoint is now supported.
  2. The FrameMaker – AEM connector now implements multi-threading to improve the performance of file operations such as upload, check-in, check-out, and browsing of the repository tree.

Other Enhancements

  1. Show/hide Conditional Text dialog is resizable.
  2. Cross Reference dialog is resizeable.
  3. The locations of most modal and modeless dialog boxes are remembered.
  4. When using DITA-OT to generate output, you can choose a DITAVAL file in the Generate DITA-OT Output dialog.
  5. Paragraph Catalog, Character Catalog, Table Catalog, and Object Style Catalog now highlights the tags which are applied for the text present at the cursor location. (FM Only)

We have fixed more than 25 bugs as well!

In addition to all these enhancements that I mentioned above, we have fixed more than 25 bugs. For a complete list of issues fixed, please refer to the readme here.

FrameMaker 12.0.3 update is now available through Adobe Update Manager (AUM). You can check for updates through Help>Update menu in FrameMaker 12. It is also available for download from FrameMaker Support Center. I encourage all the FrameMaker 12 / FM XML Author 12 users to install this update.

I hope that you will find many of these enhancements useful to your specific workflows. It will be our endeavor to release these updates on a continuous basis to meet the needs of our customers. I do want to say “Thank You!” to all of those who submitted these ideas and bug reports. Keep your feedback coming!