2017 Release of FrameMaker (Update 2)
Just a few days ago we released Update 2 for Adobe FrameMaker 2017. In this second update since the launch of FrameMaker 2017 on January 31, we have incorporated a number of enhancements and ironed out a lot of smaller glitches. I would like to extend big thanks to all those who’ve contributed by reporting issues and helping us improve the product.
The official change log is available here.
What’s new and better
Following the list of enhancements and issues fixed in the 2017 release of FrameMaker (Update 2).
In this post:
- User Interface Enhancements
- Publishing Enhancements
- DITA/XML/XSLT Enhancements
- API / ExtendScript Enhancements
- Other Enhancements
- How to get the update
- Report a bug, file in a feature request
User Interface
- Preferences Dialog
- A typo in the Alerts section of the Preferences dialog was fixed. [#2357]
- Zoom Drop-down
- A custom zoom level can now be specified in the zoom drop-down list. [#2460]
- Status Bar
- On leaving a .fm file open for a long time in unstructured mode, the status bar sometimes displayed incorrect values for page number, paragraph style, and other information. This is now fixed. [#2520]
- Edit Cross-References Dialog
- The Edit Cross-Reference Format dialog is not re-sizable. [#2528]
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- The default size of the “Edit Cross-Reference Format” dialog is much bigger now. Also, you can now resize the dialog as per your needs.
- Custom Toolbars with custom icons
- Now you can create your own toolbars and assign your own icons to the toolbar’s buttons. We have also added a maker.ini entry (
ToolbarCustomImageDir) where you can specify a custom folder for your icons. - To provide a full set of icons, you will need a total of 6 icons. Depending on the Windows Display Scaling of the user, FrameMaker 2017 automatically scales its UI in three different sizes (100%, 150% and 200%). For each of these three states you need two icons: One for the activated and one for the deactivated state of the icon. So, in total six icons. PNG is the icon required icon graphic format. Check the updated FrameMaker 2017 Online Help for more details. [#2545]
- Add/Edit Variable Pod
- Add/Edit Variable pod does not render correctly on a high-resolution display device. [#2773]
- Element Boundries As Tags
- Overlapping labels noticed in element tags when a document is viewed along with document boundaries (View > Element Boundaries (As Tags)). [#2956]
- Multi-code commands in menus.cfg
- Fixed: When custom multi-code commands are added in the menus.cfg file, only the first code in the command gets executed. [#2808]
- Alert Messages
- Extra spaces seen in the alert message shown on opening an invalid application definition file. [#2694]
Publishing
- Publishing file names containing special characters
- FrameMaker crashed if a file name containing special characters (% and ^) was published. Why would someone want to add % or ^ into his files names? We don’t know. But we have fixed it! [#2927]
- PhoneGap
- Fail to upload mobile app on PhoneGap build server. [#2759]
- CMYK PDFs
- While generating CMYK PDFs, some TrueType OpenType fonts did not show up properly in the PDF. [#2868]
- Publishig file names with spaces to Basic HTML
- You can now also publish files to “Basic HTML” that contain spaces in their file name without resulting in broken links. [#2903]
- Search in Responsive HTML5 on RoboHelp Server
- Search in Responsive HTML5 output also works now, when the help is published on RoboHelp Server. [#2894]
- Image quality
- When generating responsive HTML5 output, the image size and resolution are no longer reduced. [#2405]
- Easy migration of publish settings from FrameMaker 2015 to 2017
- Using publish settings from FrameMaker (2015 release) to generate responsive HTML5 output no longer throws an error message on opening the index.html file. [#2297]
- Dynamic HTML: Icons
- When an output containing dynamic HTML (drop-down or expanding text) effect is created, the icons associated with the text expansion and collapse are now aligned properly. [#2810]
- Dynamic HTML: TOC
- For a particular set of files containing dynamic HTML effects, the TOC gets now generated as expected. [#2809]
- Browse URL Dialog
- When using the Browse URL dialog to open a file, an error message was displayed. Similarly, an error message was displayed on saving a file. Both is fixed with this update. [#2745]
DITA/XML/XSLT
- Inserting Conrefs
- In a particular case, inserting content through DITA > Insert Conref resulted in a loss of table attributes information. We have fixed this. [2061]
- DITA Tables
- We changed th standard DITA tables a little bit. Formerly, when you inserted a table, column 1 was quite width, while the remainig columns were quite small. Now they are distributed equally by default. [#2225]
- DITA References
- In a particular case updating DITA references resulted in deletion of the link text. No longer – we fixed that! [#2687]
- Key-based Content References
- When using the key-based content reference (Insert Conref dialog), the Conref End Element drop-down list now gets refreshed. [#2686]
- DITAMAP to PDF
- Yep, fixed as well: FrameMaker sometimes crashed in certain szenarios, when when a .ditamap file was saved as PDF. [#2896]
- DITA file Save Status
- File Save dialog appears even when there are no unsaved DITA documents in the current session (#2941). We also fixed the alert message shown for unsaved DITA documents (#2518).
- XSLT Messages (xsl:message) in Console Window
- The result of <xsl:message> in Xalan is now shown in FrameMaker’s Console window. [#2437]
- XML Documentation Add-on for Adobe Experience Manager
- If a version label is added to a checked-in file, the label information is now properly stored, when connected to an AEM repository using the Connection Manager. [#1504]
API / ExtendScript
- StyleTag
- The StyleTag property of a graphic object is not exposed in ExtendScript. [#1423]
- API Client initialization
- The API client initialization error message is now technically complete. [#2804]
- Xerces version upgrade in FDK
- The out-of-the-box version of Xerces was upgraded to version 3.1.4 in Update 1. However, some APIs in FrameMaker used Xerces version 2.7. Now, with Update 2 all relevant APIs in FrameMaker have been upgraded to Xerces 3.1. If you are using any plug-in that depends on any other version of Xerces, then it is strongly recommended that you upgrade your plug-ins to use Xerces version 3.1.4.
Other Enhancements
- Unexpected Font Size Change
- Some users reported, that when the click into some text, suddenly the font size of the text changed magically. Well, this kind of magic is not what we want, don’t we? So we fixed that. [#2493]
- Memory Optimization
- We optimized the way FrameMaker deals with very large XML files. [#2772]
- Tab Stops and Tables
- Changing the tab stop values while multiple cells in a table are selected results in a crash. [#2884]
- Character Designer
- In some cases, Character Designer applied incorrect formatting on selected text. This is fixed now. [#2861]
- WebDAV
- When connected to a WebDAV server using the Browse URL dialog, the file and folder structure on the server is now properly displayed. [#2724]
- Find/Change Pod
- We fixed a random crash, that showed up from time to time when when an element is searched using the Find/Change pod. [#2953]
- Edit System Variable Pod
- In certain scenarios FrameMaker crashed on closing an active document while the “Edit System Variable” pod is open. We fixed that. [#2899]
- Scrolling through files
- For a particular set of files, FrameMaker crashed on scrolling through a file. This is fixed now. [#2816]
- Backward Compatibility
- We have a fixed a couple of bugs that occured when opening legacy FrameMaker files in FM 2017. We fixed two bugs that occured while opening certain FM 10 files in FM 2017 (#2813) and a very rare bug that made FM 2017 crash when opening certain .fm and .mif files with a special table-in-table construction created in FrameMaker 11 (#2477, #2803).
How to get Update 2 for FrameMaker (2017 release)
Getting the update is as easy. Just select > Help > Updates from FrameMaker’s main menu to fire up the Adobe Update Manager (AUM) to download and install the update.
Want to download the update to deploy it to all your FrameMaker installations without downloading it on every machine? We understand this. That’s why you can find all update packages for download also in the Adobe FrameMaker Support Center.
Found a bug? Want to suggest an improvement? Let us know!
You found a bug? You have an idea? You want to get something improved in the product?
There’s a channel for that: We call it “Adobe Tracker.” Adobe Tracker is your place to go when you find a bug and want to report it to us so that we can fix it in the next release. You can also file in your feature requests, ideas, requests for improvements. It’s very easy to do and the reports go directly into our systems, and our product managers, engineers, and support people have direct access to it.
Before you file a bug report or idea, you might want to check, if someone else has done it already. You can search through the database here. In case you find something fitting, you can add comments to the existing bug and you can also “vote” for this bug or feature request. And the more people vote for a feature … You get the idea.