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>Has anyone used the PC versions of Adobe GoLive or Macromedia
>Dreamweaver for help system creation/maintenance? To what extent were
>you satisfied/disappointed with either tool?
I've used Macromedia Dreamweaver 1.2 on Windows NT 4.0 to work on a *small*
suite of browser (IE & Netscape) help files. I like its site view, and very
much appreciate its raw HTML editing capability.
Most recently I used ForeHelp to do a quick-and-dirty upgrade to the suite
of files so that it looked the same across all files. Unfortunately,
ForeHelp 2000 has no way to tell even its Interhelp function not to embed
JavaScript references (I miss ForeHelp 1999's vanilla HTML 3.2 setting! I
was expecting 2000 to have an HTML 4.0 setting among its options, doggone
it.) Got my major editing done in ForeHelp, built the project, and lifted
the HTML and CSS files only for the actual object files that went into the
product.
Discovered the JavaScript issue when Netscape wouldn't open any of the pages
without griping about the missing .js files...and Dreamweaver let me open
and delete the header references to them instantly. But I haven't found any
way to make Dreamweaver do TOCs and indexes, and I have a lot of respect for
FH. Moreover, after my deadline was past, I was able to get info from
ForeHelp tech support about how I can create a project that does not
introduce unwanted JavaScript components.
I like Dreamweaver because I can trust it NOT to muck up my HTML code. If it
doesn't know what something is (like the ForeHelp-inserted comments), it
presents them as an artifact when you view the page in WYSIWYG. But not in a
way that interferes with editing. And its raw HTML view does not obscure the
WYSIWYG view; on a good sized monitor, I can have them side by side, save
the raw HTML, and preview the results in the WYSIWYG view without opening a
browser.
YMMV,
Deborah Snavely, Document Architect, Aurigin Systems, Inc.
