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Subject:Re: Online Help Systems From:"Chuck Martin" <cm -at- writeforyou -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 6 Oct 2003 13:49:16 -0700
Like with meany things, the answer is: It depends.
It depends on what type of product your company is producing and what kind
of user assistance will best serve the users of that product.
It depends and what authoring product(s) you (and your staff) are used to,
and what type of learning curve you're willing to endure.
It depends on whether you care about how well output is created, especially
if you're going to produce HTML-based output.
It depends on whether you (and your staff) need a lot of hand-holding
through the user assistance development process or if you know what you're
doing and need a tool that's not dumbed down (with all the resulting
compromises).
What you really should be looking at, though, is first what user assistance
technology best serves your needs and the needs of your users. Only when you
determine that can you decide on what tool(s) will be best to produce Help
systems and related user assistance.
Embedded user assistance and other performace assisting content is becoming
more important in the design and development of products, and the makor Help
development tools aren't really designed to create such content and meld it
into the product. You may find that you need several tools, not all of them
Big Name, to accomplish what you need.
Chuck Martin
P.S. I might add that I'm far from impressed with eHelp's FlashHelp
technology. First, it looks like they are using it on their site, and it's
(a) slow and (b) more flash (as opposed to Flash) than substance. Second, to
require users to install a plug in to view Help is not user friendly at all.
There's a reason why interaction design experts eschep the use of Flash on
most web sites, and the ned for a non-universal (although mostly universal)
plug in is but one of those reasons. Lot's of marketing hype here, so it's
important to look past it and see just what it does provide--and what it
costs.
"Julie Leake" <julpollock -at- attbi -dot- com> wrote in message news:215539 -at- techwr-l -dot- -dot- -dot-
>
> My company is looking to purchase an Online Help System. We are looking
> at WebWorks Professional 2003 and RoboHelp for FrameMaker (new program
> that was previously called Mustang). What are your thoughts about
> WebWorks vs. RoboHelp? Is there another program we should look at?
>
RoboHelp for FrameMaker is a NEW online publishing tool for FrameMaker that
lets you easily single-source content to online Help, intranet, and Web.
The interface is designed for FrameMaker users, so there is little or no
learning curve and no macro language required! Call 800-718-4407 for
competitive pricing or view a live demo at: http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l3
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