Due to overwhelming demand, the August 16th-19th MadCamp has reached full capacity.  MadCap Software is pleased to announce a second MadCamp training seminar, to be held August 23rd–26th in La Jolla, California.

The 4-day course will cover a range of technical writing topics, including:

• Basic/Intermediate Flare training
• Half-day CSS advanced training
• Half-day advanced single-sourcing
• Lunch with the MadCap development team
• Exclusive MadCamp attendee giveaways

Preview of never-before-seen features and functionality currently in development:

• See the latest new features and functionality of MadCap Software’s products

Training will be held at the MadCap Software office, located in beautiful downtown La Jolla, California:

• A five-minute walk to the La Jolla Cove, restaurants and shopping
• Located just 15 minutes north of downtown San Diego

Get more information on pricing and scheduling or register.

Author-it Software Corporation has announced that Author-it 5.4 has been released. There have been significant quality improvements and performance gains of up to 50% in this release.

The new release includes a number of exciting and improved features.

• The Author-it Live UI now available in French and German
• Support for Microsoft Office 2010 (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Support for Google Analytics in Web Help
• Ability to configure a default release state for your library
• Re-import functionality now includes support for Word documents
• New system heading variable can be used to display a book title or topic heading in HTML and Web Help
• Ability to filter the publishing console’s Book List by ‘Show All Books’ or ‘Show Recent Books’ options
• Ability to use a placeholder to control the word order for chapter numbering in Print outputs (especially for languages other than English)
• Updated word order for Japanese cross-references in Print outputs
• Information for working with SDL Trados Studio 2009 and Author-it XML is available in the Knowledge Center

Full release notes are available in the Author-it Knowledge Center.

(Disclaimer: While Char James-Tanny of JTF Associates is an Author-it Certified Consultant, she did not receive anything in return for posting this information.)

EC Software has announced its latest update to Help & Manual, one of the most popular Help authoring tools (HATs) among software developers. The latest version can generate Visual Studio source code documentation by importing projects from Microsoft Sandcastle.

Help & Manual 5.4 can run Microsoft Sandcastle to read your Visual Studio source code and comments, builds the documentation structure for your functions and classes, integrating the comments found in the source. Then, instead of compiling the “finished” CHM or HTML files, it transforms the Sandcastle XML data into a Help & Manual XML project, which you can then edit in Help & Manual, alone or in a team, and publish in any of the many supported output formats.

Visit the Help & Manual website for more information. Read the official press release.

New Release 2010 – Author-it Aspect – Content from your Perspective

The Right Information, to the Right People, at the Right Time.

SAN JOSE and NEWPORT BEACH, CALIFORNIA – USA, SYDNEY – AUSTRALIA and AUCKLAND – NEW ZEALAND – MARCH 21, 2010.

Author-it Software Corporation (ASC), a world leader in software for enterprise authoring, content management, publishing, and localization, today announces the launch of Author-it Aspect – a web based application that dynamically delivers content to users based on their profiles. Author-it Aspect, which forms part of the Author-it Dynamic Assistance Platform will be officially launched to the public at the WritersUA Conference in Seattle, United States on March 21-24, 2010.

The volume of written content within the world’s enterprises continues to explode. As the volume of content increases, so to do issues associated with searching for and finding relevant information. Today it is not just a matter of getting information to people. It is about getting the right information, to the right people, at the right time.

To solve this problem, ASC developed Author-it Aspect, a web-based application that works in conjunction with Author-it. Content is written in the Author-it Enterprise Authoring Platform including any variations. Examples of variations could be that a process may differ based on the operating system used or a policy may differ by state or country.

Read full story >>

About Author-it Software Corporation

Author-it Software Corporation (ASC) is a world leader in enterprise software for authoring, content management, publishing, and localization. Its flagship product, Author-it, is an end-to-end content management solution capable of publishing content to multiple deliverables. Since its release in 1997, ASC has produced five major versions of Author-it, resulting in a robust product built on proven technologies. Author-it is used in over 50 countries, by over 3500 clients and chosen by Fortune 100 organizations for worldwide deployments, making it one of the world’s most popular content management tools. ASC has offices in San Jose and Newport Beach, California, Sydney, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand. More information is available at www.author-it.com.

For further comments, industry opinions or interview opportunities, please contact:

Steve Davis
President
Author-it Software Corporation
sdavis@author-it.com
+1 (408) 701 1408

Paul Pehrson http://twitter.com/docguy) reviewed MadCap Flare 6 this week on his blog Technically Speaking.

Author-it Software Corporation has released updates for Author-it, Author-it Live, and Author-it Service Manager. Included are key updates to authoring, publishing, and importing (RoboHelp).

In addition, Author-it has released a Best Practice Guide for embedded topics.

Read the press release.

MadCap Software announced today that MadCap Flare 6.0 has been released. This version includes “single-click output for mobile devices; expands multimedia support; enhances collaboration, workflow and publishing; and tightens integration with Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS)”.

Read the press release.

Four communication and information sciences Masters students from Radboud University in the Netherlands are researching user experiences with Help authoring tools (specifically: Author-it, Flare, Doc-To-Help, Help & Manual, and RoboHelp).

They have created a survey to gain more insight in user-friendliness of functionality and overall user experiences. With the results, they plan to:

• Write an article.
• Create a matrix showing a clear overview of functionalities and associated user-friendliness score.
• Write a more practical report with recommendations.

It will take approximately 15 minutes to complete the one-page, 60-question survey. If you would like a copy of the results, you can enter your email address. You can also volunteer to participate in a short phone interview regarding the results.

The students are aware that the results are not scientific, but your help is appreciated in giving them solid data that they can analyze.

Take the survey.

If you have any comments or questions, post them here. We will do our best to get the answers.

Get the latest information from Doc-To-Help in your twitstream by following them on Twitter. You can also become a fan of theirs on Facebook.

Author-it Software Corporation is pleased to announce the release of updates for Author-it, Author-it Live, and Author-it Service Manager.

Learn more about the latest updates.