There are signs that Adobe is planning to breathe life into RoboHelp. They are said to be planning to set up a new development team in India (the former developers were laid off by previous owners Macromedia). Karl Matthews is now Adobe’s Product Manager for RoboHelp, and he is arranging a meeting at the upcoming WritersUA conference with interested parties to determine the future direction for the product.
The questions are:
Is this just talk to stop users migrating to new tools?
If they do plan to act, have they left it too late?
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the heads up. I think they’d be crazy not to continue development.
Doubt it’s too late with their market penetration, though talk alone will not suffice for long.
Adobe will be hosting a forum at an imminent WritersUA conference, in which they are asking users about possible future directions for RoboHelp. The forum is part of a marketing session about other Adobe products.
http://www.winwriters.com/articles/news/news_022306.htm
I agree with the WinWriters article: RH needs a HUGE revamp to bring it up to modern standards. We are currently migrating our custom-XML help to AuthorIT. Using AIT made me realize how much I appreciated the ease of use of editing in RoboHelp, it’s a main advantage.
It’s still a great program to create tri-pane help but…as the article stated, that may no longer be the best way to deliver useful information to users.