Flare Hot Tips and Cool Tricks

Monday

Scott DeLoach, ClickStart

10:45 am - 12:00 pm

This session will focus on the newest and most useful tips and tricks for using MadCap Flare--including many late-breaking tips that have never been discussed or shared. These tips and tricks will help you get the most out of all of Flare's major features, including importing content from RoboHelp, Word, and FrameMaker, using skins, creating printed documentation, designing stylesheets, developing master pages, and single-sourcing content with variables and snippets. At the end of the session, each attendee will receive a special Flare quick reference card. If you're ready to push Flare to the limit, this is the session for you!

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• How to import content from RoboHelp, Word, and FrameMaker
• How to develop and design skins for online help
• How to create and use styles, style classes, print styles, and table styles
• How to use advanced printed documentation features, including setting page margins and headers and footers
• How to efficiently use variables and snippets
• How to use Flare's "hidden" features

Key Issues in Help Authoring Tool Selection

Monday

Char James-Tanny, JTF Consulting

1:15 - 2:45 pm

• Customizing outputs
• Producing context-sensitive Help
• Reusability
• Localization and translation
• Output types
• Unique features

Introducing Adobe Technical Communication Suite

Monday

Vendor Technical Presentation • RJ Jacquez, Adobe

1:15 - 2:45 pm

Today, tool vendors are stepping up and delivering suites of products that include many of the tools already in your toolbox and also introduce new applications in a way that can make us more productive and marketable. The phrases “do more with less”, “faster time-to-market,” and “publishing in multiple languages and formats” have become clichés in our industry! Add to this the growing convergence in roles and responsibilities —where the same person producing the user manual has to also produce the Help system as well as create eLearning content and you have both challenges and opportunities. Challenges because you’ll likely have to broaden your toolkit and become familiar with new technologies and workflows. The opportunities, however, easily outweigh the challenges mainly because new workflows and well-integrated tools afford new opportunities for authoring and delivering richer and more engaging technical information.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• Lessons learned from how the Adobe Creative Suite changed the way creative professionals work today and became more marketable.
• Challenges and opportunities in adopting a suite of tools after using only individual, isolated products.
• Advantages of a well-integrated Suite of tools compared to using individual, point products.
• About the new Adobe Technical Communication Suite.
• What the benefits are for end-users, who consume the final deliverables.
• What the future might look like as our industry embraces Suites.

Guided Help: A Revolution for Software Help and Support?

Monday

Matthew Ellison, Matthew Ellison Consulting

3:30 - 4:45 pm

Most of us are now familiar with the principles of software demonstration tools such as Captivate, Camtasia and Mimic. These enable us to supplement our user assistance with "Show Me" demos and interactive tutorials. However, all these solutions are based on animated simulations of applications, which means that the user does not complete any real tasks while learning.

How much more useful and powerful would it be if the users were guided step-by-step through the completion of real tasks within the live application interface itself? Especially if the users were somehow prevented from making errors along the way. Sounds like the future? Well it's actually already available through a range of technologies, most of them currently used with the support sector by PC manufacturers such as Dell and HP. Another interesting example is the web-based "Guided Help" provided by Microsoft for Windows XP and Vista, although Microsoft appears to have reined back on this technology due to the cost of maintenance and testing. This session examines this technology in detail and describes a set of tools and techniques that can be used outside of Vista to achieve a combined "learning and doing" experience.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• The benefits of Guided Help and performance support.
• How Guided Help has been used by Microsoft for both Windows XP and Vista.
• Other examples of active or guided Help being used for software Help and support.
• Practical ways in which you can implement the same techniques to combine learning and doing.

Supporting Windows Mobile Devices

Tuesday

Chris De Herrera, Pocket PC FAQ

8:30 - 9:45 am

During the past couple of years, Windows Mobile has really taken off. From individuals to enterprise users they are experiencing mobile data capabilities and limitations in greater and greater numbers. With this session you will get a better understanding of how Windows Mobile works and how to support it. Learn mobile specific acronyms to communicate with users and technical support staff. Also, common communications configurations will be covered such as connecting to the internet, using ActiveSync and synchronizing data with Exchange. Also, there will be a special focus on using Exchange to manage Windows Mobile devices. With this session you will have a better understanding of the capabilities and challenges of how to use and support Windows Mobile.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• About configuring mobile devices for the enterprise.
• About the built-in features to manage mobile devices with Exchange.
• Techniques to assist users with common problems.
• About the support model for Windows Mobile.

Developing Help for the Mac

Tuesday

Matt Neuburg, TidBITS

8:30 - 9:45 am

Macintosh applications have a standard way of accessing online help: choose from the Help menu to see online Help Viewer documentation, plus any embedded PDFs, movies, and so on. How did those resources get into the application? This talk explains the process. I'll demonstrate how to embed your help files into an application and make them searchable. Plus, I'll show other tools and techniques used cooperatively by the developer and the documentor, such as interface tooltips, and interface buttons that access specific help pages. As a bonus, I'll also describe how to use Mac-specific tools to create movies that demonstrate, in action, the application you're documenting: in particular, I'll talk about using Snapz Pro to "film" your computer screen, cursor movements, and narration, along with Apple's best-kept secret for movie-making, Keynote.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• What is the format of the standard Macintosh online help, and what are some ways to generate it?
• How is online help embedded into a Mac application, and how is it made searchable?
• In a Mac application, how is online help linked to parts of the interface? How does the documentor contribute to writing explanatory tooltips in the interface?
• What other kinds of resources can be embedded in a Mac application? How are they embedded, and how will the end-user access them?
• What are the best Mac-specific tools for creating documentation movies, and how are they used?

Automated Reference Documentation Using Sandcastle

Tuesday

David Wright, Microsoft Corporation

10:15 - 11:30 am

Sandcastle is a subset of the tools used at Microsoft to create managed reference API documentation. It automates the generation of managed reference documenation in several different formats from /// comments. It is based on a very flexible and extensible architecture that can be adapted to many different requirements.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• The design principals of the Sandcastle architecture.
• Some basic capabilities of the Sandcastle tools.
• Several front-ends that can drive the Sandcastle tools.
• How get get started using Sandcastle.

Creating Auto-line Numbered Code Blocks with CSS and Microsoft Visual Studio 2005

Tuesday

Frank Palinkas, Supergroup Trading Ltd.

10:15 - 11:30 am

This session demonstrates how a technical writer can incorporate auto-line numbering of example code blocks, simulating an IDE text/source code editor environment within a technical document. The employment of valid, semantic and fully accessible code within the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 IDE source code editors is illustrated for easy and practical reference. The technique employed is especially appropriate for tech writers working with ISV's, who regularly encounter API, Class, DLL, and Method documentation tasks. A full Project Package containing all markup, css, and images will be made available to each particiapnt.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• How to create example code blocks/samples as applied in API, Class, DLL, and Method documentation.
• How to automatically number code lines to provide a quick reference point to any specific line of code in a code block/sample.
• How the structured markup of an ordered list, list items and pre elements combine with the presentational aspect of external cascading styles to produce this result.
• How to achieve this effect without javascript.

Creating Help with DITA - a Development Forum

Tuesday

Tony Self, Chair, OASIS DITA Help Subcommittee

2:45 - 4:00 pm

DITA features a topic-based architecture, just like a Help system. It also features the ditamap, a file not unlike a Help table of contents. DITA was designed for producing technical documents including Help. However, it is not a Help format; it's a storage format. A DITA document must be "transformed" into a Help format (such as HTML Help or Eclipse Help). Using the standard tools and transformers, it is not straightforward to incorporate context hooks, popups and layering in the output. So is DITA seriously appropriate for Help authoring?

In this forum, members of the DITA Technical Committee and the DITA Help Subcommittee will explain the pros and cons, and canvass your opinion as a Help author. The Subcommittee is working to recommend improvements and best practices for DITA's use in Help authoring. The forum will discuss:

• Where DITA fits into the Help picture.
• What developments are underway to make it much more attractive as a Help authoring platform.
• How it will always be different from "traditional" Help platforms.
• Whether it might be suitable for a Help delivery format.
• What additional facilities DITA would need to be a viable Help development option.
• Whether DITA should be used for embedded UA as well as self-contained Help.

The format will be an open forum, giving you the opportunity to ask questions, share your thoughts and make suggestions to the committee members involved.