Adobe Applications for Tech Writers

Thursday, October 4th, 2007 at 6:54 AM | Category: Business, Meryl's Notes Blog, Tech, Writing No comments

RoboHelp is a tech writer’s dream and nightmare. It makes some things easier while making some things difficult. When Adobe bought out eHelp, the industry hoped it would mean RoboHelp would get the help it needed to move to the next level. The first release under Adobe was disappointing.

This is the second Robohelp update for this year and it looks like the lift RoboHelp needs according to InternetNews. The application sells as an individual product or part of the technical communications suite, which includes Framemaker, Captivate (fantastic tool), and Acrobat 3D.

Tech writers have searched for applications  competing with Robohelp and eHelp / Adobe has been lucky no company has stepped up (to my knowledge). Or do you know of one?

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Macromedia Is No More… Adobe Takes Over

Thursday, December 8th, 2005 at 8:32 AM | Category: Business, Meryl's Notes Blog, Tech No comments

It’s official. Macromedia is no more as Adobe has engulfed it. The Flash on the the site formerly known as Macromedia says “Adobe and Macromedia are now one.” The site also has the Adobe logo along with the tagline of “Formerly Macromedia.” So what does this all mean for customers?

Timothy Gray [Link: Chris ] posted his thoughts. I somewhat agree and disagree with each one. First up, Adobe is selling Macromedia’s Studio 8 and its Creative Suite 2 Premium in one package for $1899. This is a savings of $299 as Studio 8 costs $899 and CS2 Premium $1199. But how many people don’t have something from the bundle? Is it worth the price when you have, say… two or three items like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Flash? Probably not unless they’re older versions.

While the current bundle offers a good deal, what about future releases? Adobe doesn’t have Macromedia to compete with anymore. Who’s the competitor now? Microsoft? Frontpage has a lot of work before it can compete with Dreamweaver and the company doesn’t have any products to compete with Adobe’s other apps.

Also in Gray’s posting, a Senior VP posted a comment (the first one) that says, “We are not merging Flash and Acrobat!” Good to know. The same comment also mentions Adobe is developing a browser: “We are also going to build a new client, code names Apollo, that has the best of HTML, PDF and Flash–but this is not a replacement for Flash, but a new out of browser client.” On one hand, more browser competition. On the other, could it mean more headaches for designers?

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