Product Launch: Brand new RoboHelp (2015 Release) and Tech Comm Suite (2015 Release)

Welcome to RoboHelp 2015! Adobe RoboHelp (2015 release) empowers you to deliver engaging help, policy, and knowledge base content across mobile devices, formats, and platforms. Publish content as mobile apps, or in HTML5, ePUB 3, KF8, and MOBI. Help users find relevant content faster with Dynamic Content filters and contextual search results. Work more productively with a modern ribbon UI, customizable Quick Access toolbar, contextual tabs, and named Conditional Expressions.

You asked for it, and we listened!

Eighteen months ago we released RoboHelp 11, which introduced several significant innovations, including seamless, one-step publishing to HTML5 responsive layout. Things have changed a great deal since early 2014, and we now live in a world where innovations related to HTML5, CSS3 are increasingly as rapidly as the arrival or smaller and more powerful screens.

Customers have become more involved and connected with content, and many of them demand more control over filtering or choosing the information they see. Our customers also need and demand “better findability”, be it in Help, Policies and Procedures, professional knowledge bases and other intelligent content.

Please note that besides a few embedded videos in this blog, we have a list of useful resources for documentation and other files listed at the very end.

Key Categories of Enhancements

Due to the high number of new features and significant enhancements, we have clustered our new product features under 4 pillars of functionality:

Work more productively with a modern interface
Leverage next-generation mobile publishing
Make content more findable
Deliver content-centric apps across major platforms

Let’s explore these pillars, not in order of importance, but perhaps in areas where existing users may have the highest interest level.

Deliver Content-Centric Mobile Apps Across Major Platforms

Ensure wider distribution and consumption of content with a simplified mobile app generation workflow and native integration with Adobe PhoneGap Build. All you need to generate apps with PhoneGap Build is a PhoneGap Build license. Easily publish your content as mobile apps for iOS and Android with just one click.

Publish mobile apps from Adobe RoboHelp 2015 via Adobe PhoneGap to iOS and Android

Part of the mobile app generation process is the creation of a QR code that will enable users to quickly “snap” the app on their smart phones. Watch the video below for a fuller picture.

//tv.adobe.com/embed/1526/24251/

Work More Productively With a Modern User Interface

Ribbon UI [NEW]

Work more productively with a modern, workflow-centric, ribbon UI. Customize the interface with a theme of your choice and colored or grayscale icons. Work faster with a customizable Quick Access toolbar and contextual tabs. Watch the video below for a dynamic presentation of this new time saving feature.

//tv.adobe.com/embed/1526/24245/

Enhanced Search Functionality

Work faster with bidirectional and multiline searches in the TOC, files, and index pods. Set the search scope to the current project or window, a specific folder, or all open files. Zip through search results in Design mode, and easily edit topics by double-clicking them.

Find results in Design Mode
Open the files directly from search results
Now you can set the search scope to:
- Current Project
- Specific Folder
- Current Window (including TOC/Index etc.) – New
- All opened Files – New
Multi-line search
Standard keyboard shortcut CTRL + F
Search direction support (forward/backward)
Separate tabs for find and replace

Named Conditional Expressions

Easily manage a large number of conditional expressions in a project by giving them descriptive, easy-to-remember names. Eliminate the hassle of having to decipher the logic each time you need to use expressions.

Enhanced Conditional Indicators

Maintain readability of content even when multiple tags are applied, using enhanced conditional tags indicators. Easily find which tags have been applied and where the conditions change within a topic.

Overline is used as conditional indicator
Better readability than cross hatches
Color of the overline is exactly that of tag
Easy to figure out the tag boundaries

Remembered Project State

Enjoy the convenience of having projects opened in exactly the same state in which they were closed. No need to remember which topics and pods were opened last—RoboHelp (2015 release) automatically restores them.

Adobe Captivate Support

Easily integrate HTML5 and SWF content created with the latest release of Adobe Captivate into your RoboHelp files. Enhance your help content with show-me demos, how-to movies, and interactive quizzes.

Colored and Grayscale Icons

Customize the look of the new ribbon UI using colored or grayscale icons.

Out-of-the-box UI Themes

Work in your favorite environment. Choose from four out-of-the-box color themes to customize the look of the new ribbon UI.

Auto-hide Ribbons

Maximize the document viewing area using auto-hide ribbons. The ribbon toolbar stays hidden while you are working, but offers easy access when you hover on the tab.

Contextual Tabs

Work more productively with Contextual tabs for objects, such as tables. Depending on the object selected, the contextual tab appears with a list of relevant actions.

Work faster than ever by keeping your most frequently used operations at your fingertips. Customize the QAT with any operation supported in the main toolbar.

Find Topics in Project Manager

Easily locate topics in the Project Manager. Just click the topic, TOC, or topic list pod to locate and highlight the topic.

Easy Update of CSS Styles

Now easily edit the styles in a CSS. Style content inline and update the CSS style from the inline style with a single click.

Leverage next-generation mobile publishing

New HTML5 layout

Deliver a personalized content consumption experience. Configure search to appear on the content or topic panes, and show context and breadcrumbs in the results. Easily show or hide widgets, such as glossary and TOC. Convert the layout to right-to-left languages just by changing one property.

Enhanced search results in HTML5 layouts

Provide greater context to end users by showing more details in search results. Configure the search results to appear on the content or topic panes, and show breadcrumbs and topic descriptions. By default, the first few sentences of the topic are shown as description, but authors can also write their own.

//tv.adobe.com/embed/1526/24249/

Generate mobile output that is easily shareable on Facebook and Twitter with out-of-the-box support for social widgets provided by the new HTML5 layout.

Custom Fonts in ePUB files

Embed custom fonts in your ePUB output and ensure that your users see high-quality typography exactly as you intended, whether or not they have the font installed on their device.

Note: You must have distribution rights for the embedded font.

Optimized HTML5 Output

Now experience as much as a 50% reduction in loading time, file size savings of about 20KB per topic, and smoother transitions between pages with faster, more responsive HTML5 output.

Maintained TOC State in HTML5 Output

Work more conveniently by maintaining the TOC state—as the new responsive HTML5 output remembers the state of the books. Two or more books can be expanded simultaneously.

Make Content More Findable

Dynamic Content Filters

Empower users to find relevant content faster in the document, TOC, index, and glossary.

Leverage existing conditional tags and expressions to enable end users to dynamically filter content in the final HTML5 output, thereby delivering personalized help experiences. View the video below for a dynamic look at how much more appealing your customers will find out output from the new RoboHelp.

//tv.adobe.com/embed/1526/24243/

Enhanced Dynamic User-Centric Content (DUCC) Output

Use the new dynamic content filters to create enhanced DUCC output that generates only one set of HTML5 files regardless of the number of expressions used. Easily migrate your current DUCC outputs to new, more efficient ones based on dynamic content filters.

Dynamic Filter Support in Context-Sensitive Help (CSH)

Provide more targeted contextual help with URL support in the new dynamically filtered output. Embed the selected filters in the URL and use that URL in the CSH calls.

Tagged Output View

Now see how filtered content will look for different combinations of filters by easily testing dynamic content filters using the Tagged Output view. The view also shows the tags that have been applied to the generated HTML5 files.

In Summary

With RoboHelp (2015 Release) you can work more productivity achieving stunning results for a broader audience in less time than ever before. The major user interface redesign makes the product more accessible than ever. You will find endless customer-specific solutions with your ability to manipulate filter widgets, named expressions and such. No doubt, you eager to explore the product beyond what we share in this post.

Important Resources for further exploration

We have placed a host of useful resources online to help you further explore new RoboHelp (2015 Release). You will find a more complete list in our new Productopedia (2015 Release).

Discover What’s New in RoboHelp (Release 2015) in our Launch Webinar

On June 18, we held a special webinar, “PRODUCT LAUNCH: What’s new in RoboHelp (2015 Release) and Tech Comm Suite (2015 Release)”.

If you missed this session, go to the following link to view this in-depth, webinar recording:

Recording Link: https://2610459.meetus.adobeevents.com/