In addition to being a technology journalist, I'm also a freelance technical writer, which means I write software manuals, develop online help, create online and classroom training and so forth. As such, I pay close attention to announcements like the one that came from Adobe today when they released an all-new Technical Communications Suite aimed squarely at the tech writer side of me.
This aggressively-priced tech communications suite includes an all-new version of Robohelp 7 along with recently released versions of Frame 8, Captivate 3 and Acrobat 3D (and some other goodies). With all these tools, I can generate print and PDF manuals, several different flavors of Help and develop training, all from one integrated environment.
The package won't be available until the end of October, but I've seen this in action in a demo, and on paper anyways, it looks very impressive. RH and Frame are completely integrated in a the same fashion as Frame and WebWorks Publisher. RH is now supposed to generate valid HTML; gone are the hated Kadov tags. You can easily integrate Captivate demos. Like the most recent version of the Creative Suite, Adobe appears to have taken care to put integration on the front burner to make it easier for training and tech writing departments to share content.
When Adobe demonstrated RoboHelp 6 for me last winter, I was not impressed at all, but with some time to rework it, they appear to have answered all the criticisms I had of RH6 and then some with RH 7. What's more they have integrated it with Frame to create a fully featured publishing environment.
Until I take it through its paces with a project, it's hard to judge but the first impressions were good and it appears clear that Adobe wants to claim a place in the tech writing market.
Pricing for the Suite:
$1599 new
$999 with prior version of Frame, RH or Captivate (which is just about everyone who is a tech writer)
A great set of applications aimed squarely at a market that could use them, with one huge gap in the offering--no content management system. Adobe has done a great job of assembling a broad suite of tools to create almost any type of information, but the ability to manage all this created content through a complex workflow is still missing.
Posted by: danortega | September 25, 2007 at 10:30 AM