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Thanks to those who responded to my last question about how to evaluate help
tools. There were some very helpful ideas there. Now I have some followup
and more specific questions :-)
Has anyone ever used Sevensteps? I downloaded a trial version of it and like
how easy it is to use, to create topics, contents, an index and "Help
Assistants," but there are limitations. As far as I can tell, you can't
change the template at all, you can't include any html in the body text, and
I don't know how you'd list multiple applications for searching.
I've looked at AuthorIT, though I haven't tried it. It looks to me like it's
intended to publish help that will be distributed with an application and
stored on the local drive.
All the applications I'm writing for are web-based, and the help needs to be
too.
I've also seen recommendations for Dreamweaver/Devahelp and I'm curious
about how that works. Is it the design tool, Devahelp the compiler, and some
other app (Word or something) where you actually write? I used Dreamweaver 2
and was frustrated by its instability. I'm sure that's much improved now,
but I still think of it much more as a web _design_ tool, than an authoring
environment. Has it changed that much? Although one of my complaints about
Sevensteps is lack of design control, I don't need much. I just want to
create one template that fits our "look" and never change it again.
If it helps, the development is all done in Visual Studio.NET 7.0. Both the
applications and the current Help are ASP pages.
Also, Geoff Hart recommended taking a Help Authoring class or reading a
book. I'd love to do both of the above, if I could find such things!! I am
taking a Technical Writing class targeted at Information Technology students
next quarter at the community college, and I've read both of Michael
Bremer's books--The User Manual Manual and Untechnical Writing. I haven't
been able to find any really current books about specifically writing online
help, writing for web-based applications, or using help authoring tools
(apart from Robohelp, which I don't think is what I need). Any
recommendations?
Again, thanks for any help. This is a wonderful community!
Rosemary
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