Easily Create Mobile Apps from FrameMaker

With FrameMak­er 2015, tech­ni­cal writ­ers can eas­i­ly cre­ate mobile apps that run on iOS and Android smart­phones and tablets.

What is a Mobile App?

A mobile appli­ca­tion, most com­mon­ly referred to as an app, is a type of appli­ca­tion soft­ware designed to run on a mobile device, such as a smart­phone or tablet com­put­er. Why cre­ate an app? Con­sid­er some of the recent mobile trends that affect how tech­ni­cal writ­ers per­form their jobs:

• The pop­u­lar­i­ty of apps is unde­ni­able. Eighty-five per­cent of users said they pre­fer using apps com­pared to mobile web sites. In addi­tion, users are spend­ing more time using apps—an increase of 21 per­cent in 2015 com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year. Source: Business2Community.
• Tech­ni­cal writ­ers rec­og­nize the impor­tance of mobile and are embrac­ing new tech­nolo­gies. Accord­ing to research gath­ered by Adobe in 2013, 38 per­cent of respon­dents were out­putting their con­tent to respon­sive HTML5 Help, apps, and EPUB files, up from the 15 per­cent the year before.

Why Create a Mobile App?

You may con­sid­er cre­at­ing an app for the fol­low­ing reasons:

• Your users have an inter­mit­tent con­nec­tion to the Inter­net: Once the app is installed on a smart­phone or tablet, it no longer requires a wire­less or mobile con­nec­tion to view the con­tent. In con­trast, HTML5 help sys­tems require a brows­er, which usu­al­ly needs an Inter­net con­nec­tion to view the con­tent (although some browsers, such as Google Chrome, can run in offline mode).
• Speed: Users will get the answers they need faster using an app ver­sus launch­ing a brows­er, nav­i­gat­ing to your help page, and wait­ing for the con­tent to appear.
• High­er vis­i­bil­i­ty: An app is installed on a user’s smart­phone or tablet, mak­ing it easy to locate and launch. In con­trast, an online help sys­tem is typ­i­cal­ly includ­ed in a soft­ware pack­age and may not be easy to find or open.

A Quick History of FrameMaker

Back in 2000,  I wrote con­tent in FrameMak­er and then con­vert­ed it to Web­Help using Quadralay Corporation’s Web­Works, which was inte­grat­ed into FrameMak­er at the time.

In 2005, Adobe acquired Macro­me­dia and with it Robo­Help, its help author­ing tool. A few years lat­er, Abobe offered its Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Suite, which pro­vid­ed tighter inte­gra­tion between FrameMak­er and Robo­Help. For the first time, you could write con­tent in FrameMak­er and then have con­tent con­vert­ed to help by Robo­Help. Sim­i­lar to the FrameMak­er and Web­Works integration.

In the last few years, FrameMak­er has changed again so that you can direct­ly cre­ate online help direct­ly from with­in the pro­gram. FrameMak­er 2015 added the abil­i­ty to cre­ate mobile apps.

A Primer: Creating an App from FrameMaker

After you author your con­tent in FrameMak­er, select File > Pub­lish. In the Pub­lish dia­log box, select the out­put type you require: respon­sive HTML5, Mobile App, Web­Help, ePub, Microsoft HTML Help, and others.

Select the Mobile App option and right-click Edit Set­tings. FrameMak­er dis­plays the Pub­lish Set­tings: FM Set­tings dia­log box, which enables you to con­fig­ure the mobile app.

The fol­low­ing image shows some sam­ple con­tent I draft­ed in FrameMak­er with­out attempt­ing to for­mat the content.

The next image shows the same con­tent that appears in a mobile app that I cre­at­ed for Android.

Cre­at­ing a mobile app from FrameMak­er is sur­pris­ing­ly easy.

For more infor­ma­tion on the detailed steps, see a relat­ed blog post on cre­at­ing a mobile app using Robo­Help. The FrameMak­er user inter­face for cre­at­ing an app is very sim­i­lar to the one avail­able in RoboHelp.

Cre­at­ing Android and iOS Mobile Apps