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Every time I review a version
of Blue Sky Software's outstanding RoboHELP Office help authoring software,
I find that I'm reviewing a new version only a few short months later.
My review of RoboHELP Office 6 appeared just seven months ago in Sacra
Blue, and RoboHELP Office 7 (RHO7) has already been out for a few months.
What's more, the next version of RoboHELP Office will be out around
the middle of this year. All of these rapid-fire releases don't mean
that Blue Sky fears they're running out of money-after all, RoboHELP
Office is the industry standard help authoring system, and the product
has won more awards than I can count. Blue Sky is releasing new versions
so rapidly because Windows online help is changing so quickly. The good
news is that Blue Sky keeps improving the product each time it comes
out with a release, and these product improvements are worth the price
of upgrading.
Everything I discussed and illustrated in my RoboHELP 6 review still
applies to RoboHELP 7, so I want to focus on what's new and what's
been added to RoboHELP Office 7, and in particular the special edition that includes
two other programs. The first is the limited edition of InstallShield
Express, a program that lets you create your own installation programs
for help files, demo files, or even Visual Basic 5 files. The second
is the professional edition of FullShot 99, an image-capturing program
from Inbit Systems. I hope to review these programs
in a subsequent issue of Sacra Blue. For this review, I want to focus
on the Blue Sky components of RHO7.
For those of you who remember the massive boxes and manuals that used
to ship with RoboHELP, you'll be pleased to know that Blue Sky is following
the trend toward putting most to all of its documentation online. The
RHO7 package contains three slim (250 page) manuals in much smaller
packaging. These three manuals get you started with RoboHELP Classic,
RoboHELP HTML Edition, and the various RoboHELP Office Tools, and consist
of step-by-step instructions on how to perform different tasks. Blue
Sky has moved the rest of its documentation into electronic format using
its new WinHelp 2000 technology (keep reading for more details). If
you want the documentation in printed format, the RoboHELP package includes
a form so you can order the printed documentation at no charge, but
you will have to wait four to six weeks for it.
Installation requirements for RoboHELP Office are remarkably tame--your
computer should have at least a 486 processor with 16 MB of RAM and
90 MB of hard disk space running Windows 95, 98, or NT 4.0. I installed
RoboHELP on my Cyrix 90-MHz 586 with 20 MB of RAM running Windows 95a,
and it installed without a hitch. I had some initial trouble trying
to get the software to run, but it seemed to be a Windows 95 problem
instead of a RoboHELP problem, and once Scandisk cleaned up my hard
disk the problem went away. As with RoboHELP Office 6, RoboHELP provides
three different icons for RoboHELP Office, RoboHELP Classic, and RoboHELP
HTML Edition. You can access programs in RHO7 through the RoboHELP Office
program or by using the RoboHELP Office Quick Bar on your desktop.
RoboHELP Classic is the product that became the online help authoring
standard, and it has several important new features in this release.
The feature that's getting the most attention is WinHelp 2000, an upgraded
version of Windows online help that's similar to what you find in HTML
Help. That is, you see the topics in a pane on the left side of the
window and the help window on the right hand side. WinHelp 2000 also
contains some worthwhile improvements, including the ability to add
smart "See Also" buttons so you can link like topics together, background
watermarks on help screens, and HTML links from inside your help systems.
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However, the more significant
improvements aren't associated with WinHelp 2000. The new Smart Indexing
Wizard is a far easier way to put together indexes. The new Browse Sequence
Editor lets you determine the order of topics the user sees when browsing
(i.e., going back and forth in the help file by clicking on the >> and
<< buttons at the top of the help window). The new Macro Wizard simplifies
entering RoboHELP macros. You can now set window and project settings
as their own templates for future use. There are improved graphics capabilities.
You can now automatically set a new help topic with a default window
(primary or secondary). Perhaps the most important addition is the new
Diagnostics Report feature, which gives you far more detailed information
about problems with your help file. These and many other new and improved
features are welcome (and some might say overdue) arrivals for RoboHELP
Classic 7.
Now that Microsoft is moving to HTML Help, RoboHELP HTML Edition has
become a rather powerful HTML Help authoring tool that doesn't require
any additional software as RoboHELP Classic does. There are some new
features with RoboHELP HTML Edition, including some interface improvements
and the addition of the Smart Indexing Wizard. The most important improvement
is with WebHelp, Blue Sky's technology for converting HTML Help files
to standard HTML files. The new version 2 of WebHelp now automatically
detects which browser you're using and immediately starts the browser
when you open the help file. WebHelp 2 is only found in RoboHELP HTML
Edition and isn't in RoboHELP Classic, so if you're creating HTML Help
using RoboHELP Classic's single-source feature (i.e., creating several
different versions of your help system from one source), you may want
to bring in an HTML Help file created in RoboHELP Classic into RoboHELP
HTML Edition for final tweaking. I hope Blue Sky puts the same WebHelp
engine in both RoboHELP components in the next release.
Blue Sky is keeping to its schedule of releasing a new version once
a year, and RoboHELP Office 2000 will be released this summer. Besides
the new version's support of Office 2000, the RoboHELP Classic manual
offers some hints about some other improvements. In particular, RoboHELP
Classic is expanding its ability to import other files, including plain
HTML, HTML Help, and FrameMaker files. It will be interesting to see
how the engineers at Blue Sky flesh out these improvements in the next
version. If you don't want to keep paying hundreds of dollars year in
and year out, Blue Sky now offers a subscription plan that lets you
get new versions over a period of time through the mail without any
additional shipping charges.
If you need online help authoring and you don't see any reason for moving
away from Office 95 or 97 in the near future, you should strongly consider
RoboHELP Office 7. It remains the fastest, easiest, and most powerful
way to produce professional online help systems.
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