H.A.T. Tricks Past, Present, Future

Transcription

1 H.A.T. Tricks Past, Present, Future

2 Who Am I? Neil Perlin - Hyper/Word Services. Internationally recognized content consultant. Help clients create effective, efficient, flexible content in anything from hard-copy to mobile. STC s lead W3C rep Certified RoboHelp, Flare, Mimic, ViziApps, Captivate (expired), ForeHelp (long gone ).

3 Evolution of HATs (in 3 slides ) HATs today HATs tomorrow The HAT space Flare and RoboHelp Time for questions

4 Evolution of HATs

5 Evolution of HATs From this To this

6 Evolution of HATs Example 2, RoboHelp for Word, was a big improvement over RTF coding although

7 Evolution of HATs HATs were very esoteric in 91 Doctor Help RoboCop HATs were thought to be dead when help changed from RTF to HTML in Yet the HATs adapted, and merged silos. Or disappeared from 30+ HATs to today s few powerhouses.

8 HATs Today

9 HATs Today A few major players, in rough market share order: RoboHelp Flare Doc-To-Help Help and Manual AuthorIT More at HAT-Matrix (

10 HATs Today Long-ago evolved past help, although older tools names reflect their roots e.g. Doc- To-Help, RoboHelp. Can be used to create almost any type of doc online, print, mobile, etc

11 HATs Today Reflect or even anticipate changing trends in technologies and methodologies. Topic-based authoring? Doc-To-Help, Robo- Help in Structured authoring? Informally in every HAT via topic templates. DITA? Flare, RoboHelp 5 years ago. Single sourcing? Yep

12 HATs Today more XML? RoboHelp X5 in early 2000s, XHTML... VCS integration? RoboHelp X3(?), Flare. CSH? Almost every HAT since day 1. Mobile? Mobile-optimized web apps in Flare 6, ebooks in RoboHelp 8, HTML5 in Flare 8 and RoboHelp 10. HTML5? Flare 8, RoboHelp 10.

13 HATs Today more Native mobile apps? RoboHelp 10. Support for browser strict mode? DOCTYPE specification option in Flare. Dynamic OLH? AuthorIT. Others?

14 HATs Tomorrow

15 HATs Tomorrow Some guesses: Continued increase in standards compliance. Continued support of new technologies and methodologies, if only on a vendor analysis checkoff list basis like DITA. Continued one-upmanship, to our benefit:» Flare s out-of-the-gate support for XHTML, nuclear-powered CSS editor, QR codes in 7.» RoboHelp 10 s output of native mobile apps, support for index in epub output.

16 HATs Tomorrow Some more guesses: Support for social media integration. Increasing need for rigorous project planning and less winging-it or thinking outside the box. Continued see-saw battle between output and content.

17 The HAT Space

18 Some Major Characteristics Wide and deep support ecology for major vendors. Varying levels of support quality. An increasingly confusing environment: HTML Help vs. HTML help? WebHelp vs. Web Help? AIR? Chrome? Windows Help vs. Windows Help?

19 Some Major Characteristics Priority shifts print to online, mobile, PDF, projects requiring multiple outputs. Standing pat Companies still using dead tools like ForeHelp, dead tool versions like RoboHelp X5, or in-house tools that no one in the company understands.

20 Some Major Characteristics HAT work needs to be integrated into the company s larger strategic direction e.g. what s our business rationale?

21 Flare and RoboHelp

22 Flare MadCap One of the newest HATs, about 7 years old. Abandoned many legacy formats and styles result is cleaner code but causes problems for companies that want to upgrade legacy/ pre-html projects.

23 Flare Demo

24 RoboHelp Adobe robohelp.edu.html 2 nd oldest HAT, after Doc-To-Help. Orphaned product during the Macromedia era, rebuilding since then. Has a huge legacy project and format tail that can make new releases a difficult job.

25 RoboHelp Demo

26 Hyper/Word Services Offers Training Consulting Development Flare RoboHelp RoboInfo Flare Mobile RoboHelp HTML5/Mobile ViziApps Mimic CSS XML

27 Thank you... Questions? Hyper/Word Services Twitter: NeilEric