Adobe has announced the release of Adobe Technical Communication Suite (2019 release). The suite comprises FrameMaker, RoboHelp, Captivate, Acrobat Pro DC and Adobe Presenter. We’ve been involved in the preview programme, and we can say there have been quite a number of changes with this release.
One of the biggest changes to FrameMaker and RoboHelp has been to the User Interface. In our review of the previous version, we said the UI was looking somewhat dated and messy. For this release, Adobe has completely redesigned the UI. It now looks modern, and key functions (such as PDF printing) are no longer buried away.
FrameMaker
FrameMaker is much faster. It now has a 64-bit architecture and a new PDF engine. This means it’s faster at publishing PDF and HTML content, and rendering images.
FrameMaker’s strength has been in managing large, complex documents, particularly those written in DITA and other XML schemas. Adobe has been working on making it even more robust in these environments.
There have also been improvements to the publishing aspects. You can deliver personalised content with Adobe’s dynamic content filters to some nice looking Responsive HTML5 themes.
RoboHelp
RoboHelp has also been subject to a comprehensive redevelopment, having been designed using a new technology stack. The UI is a lot better, and the new skin editor and real-time CSS3 editor help writers manage the complexities of HTML5 design.
Adobe has also improved the search function, including autocomplete and autocorrect. As with FrameMaker, there’s support for high quality SVG images, and personalised content with Adobe’s dynamic content filters.
Overall, it’s a thumbs up for both FrameMaker and RoboHelp.
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