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The podcasts I record for I'd Rather Be Writing cover the latest trends in technical communication. I interview tech writing luminaries around the world as well as record STC presentations and other audio content. You can subscribe to podcast specific feeds using the subscription information below.
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(Mike Hamilton Gives Flare Demo to the Suncoast Chapter
January 5th, 2007 | Posted in Podcasts 7 Comments »
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Duration: 109 min.
Mike Hamilton from Madcap Software visited the Suncoast chapter in Tampa, Florida, and presented on Flare. In this presentation, he talks about the real story behind RoboHelp and Macromedia/Adobe (this blew my mind). He also provides a lot of inside detail on Flare.
Specific topics in the podcast include:
- Importing and exporting Flare projects (more impressive than you might think)
- One major limitation of Robohelp with single-sourcing when it comes to indexes (oh man, I wish I knew this earlier)
- Flare’s visual XML editor (nice)
- Modifying lists and tables by manipulating structure bars with Flare’s editor (the technical writer’s dream)
- Flare’s undockable panes and customization of the workspace (potentially very powerful, especially if you have two monitors)
- The powerful and robust style editor in Flare (truly awesome in scope)
- Madcap Mimic and its purpose, especially in comparison to Captivate (intriguing about the file sizes)
- Madcap Capture and its special layering of images (interesting feature)
Music from Podshow
RoboHelp was the only product mentioned by name in the promotion that offers a discount for switching. However, I’ll not assume that Mike Hamilton has anything to do with MadCap’s marketing, since he’s involved in the product management. Thepodcast that Tom mentionedhas Hamilton saying he wanted to disband some myths floating out on the Web about what happened between him and Macromedia. A brief summary: When Macromedia acquired eHelp, he expected RoboHelp to go to the next level, but they primarily wanted
[...] revamped RoboHelp 6. Back on January 5, the Suncoast (Tampa, FL) chapter of the STC hosted a demo of Blaze by Madcap’s Mike Hamilton, and captured the audio as a [...]
[...] to kill off RH, I urge you to listen to Mike Hamilton’s inside version of events over at Tech Writer Voices’ January 5th podcast. A fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the benefits and perils of producing a niche product in [...]
Is this supposed to be audio only? No video?
Yes, just audio. I realize video would be better, but we’re not there yet technically.
Val, there is a Flare demo 5/9/07 at 2pm Pacific
Time. Ask someone at madcapsoftware.com for details.
[...] webinar guy mentioned some comments made about RoboHelp in a podcast. He was surely referring to this podcast with Mike Hamilton on Tech Writer Voices, but when I asked the moderator what podcast he was referring to, here was the response I [...]