Robert Desprez Communications

Generating iPad content using RoboHelp 10

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Robo­Help 10 makes it much eas­i­er to gen­er­ate EPUB files, the most wide­ly accept­ed file for­mat for e‑books. EPUB files can be read on an array of devices includ­ing the iPad, iPhone, and smart­phones run­ning on Android.

What is an EPUB file?

An EPUB doc­u­ment is a zip file with the .epub exten­sion. You cre­ate EPUB files using Microsoft Word, Adobe InDe­sign, and help author­ing tools such as Mad­cap Flare and Adobe Robo­Help. This blog entry explains the major steps of cre­at­ing EPUB files using Robo­Help 10, which was released this summer.

Advantages of EPUB

* Easy to pro­duce. Cre­at­ing EPUB files are easy to pro­duce with new­er author­ing tools.

* EPUB con­tent reflows. In Eliz­a­beth Cas­tro’s book EPUB Straight to the Point, she writes: “If you’re read­ing it (an EPUB file) on an iPhone, the width of the page is a fair bit small­er than if you’re read­ing it on an iPad, or on some oth­er read­er. The beau­ty of EPUB is that it flows the text to fit what­ev­er screen it’s on.” In con­trast, the pre­sen­ta­tion of a PDF file stays large­ly sta­t­ic, regard­less if you’re using a PC, a Mac, an iPhone, or an iPad.

* Can be viewed offline. Once you down­load a EPUB file, you can view it with­out an Inter­net connection.

Disadvantages of EPUB

* Nav­i­ga­tion is not ide­al. The EPUB file for­mat sup­ports a table of con­tents at the start of the EPUB file. But if you’re want­i­ng to skim the table of con­tents, you need to jump to the front of the doc­u­ment. A tra­di­tion­al online help sys­tem always dis­plays the table of con­tents, mak­ing it easy to jump to anoth­er topic.

* Best suit­ed to lin­ear read­ing. The EPUB file for­mat is fine for tra­di­tion­al books in which you read lin­ear­ly. Users of tech­ni­cal doc­u­ments do not read this way. They skip from top­ic to top­ic in an effort to find the answers they need.

* Extra app required. iBooks, Apple’s e‑reader app, is not pre-installed on the iPad. Users first need to down­load the free app before they can read EPUB files. Not a huge deal but it is anoth­er step for users.

Writing EPUB content in RoboHelp

I assume that you are famil­iar with Robo­Help so I don’t try to explain every option and con­cept in the soft­ware. I focus on what’s new in Robo­Help 10 and how it can eas­i­ly cre­ate EPUB files.

Step 1: Write your content in RoboHelp

Write your doc­u­men­ta­tion in Robo­Help as you nor­mal­ly would.

Step 2: Generate your content as an EPUB format

  1. In the Sin­gle Source Lay­outs sec­tion, dou­ble-click eBook.

Step 3: Select your options

General section
  1. In the eBook Set­tings dia­log box, click Gen­er­al.
  2. In the eBook For­mats sec­tion, select the EPUB 3 check box. You can also gen­er­ate an out­put file that is com­pat­i­ble with the Kindle.
  3. If need­ed, make changes to your out­put fold­er and file name.
  4. In the Options sec­tion, you may want to select the Val­i­date EPUB 3 Out­put check box. An open source tool called epub­check val­i­dates your EPUB file.

Content section
  1. In the eBook Set­tings dia­log box, click Con­tent.
  2. In the Table of Con­tents drop-down list, select the table of con­tents that you cre­at­ed in RoboHelp.
  3. In the Index and Glos­sary drop-down lists, select an index and glos­sary if you set them up in RoboHelp.
  4. In the Con­di­tion­al Build Expres­sion sec­tion, change your con­di­tion­al text set­tings if need­ed. With con­di­tion­al text, you can tag cer­tain sec­tions of your con­tent for dif­fer­ent audi­ences or deliverables.
Meta Information section
  1. In the eBook Set­tings dia­log box, click Meta Infor­ma­tion.
  2. In the Title box, type the name of the EPUB file.
  3. In the Author(s) box, type the name of the author. This may be your name or the name of your department.
  4. In the Publisher(s) box, type your com­pa­ny’s name.
  5. In the Descrip­tion box, type a sen­tence or two that pro­vides a good sum­ma­ry of your document.
  6. In the Cov­er Image sec­tion, select the image you’d like to be on the cov­er on your EPUB file.
  7. Click Save and Generate.

Step 4: Download Adobe Digital Editions

Adobe Dig­i­tal Edi­tions free soft­ware offers a way to view and man­age EPUB files and oth­er dig­i­tal pub­li­ca­tions. I think of it as soft­ware to quick­ly test your gen­er­at­ed file before trans­fer­ring the file to an iPad.

This step is option­al but could save you time if you intend to gen­er­ate mul­ti­ple EPUB files. When Robo­Help fin­ish­es gen­er­at­ing the file and you click View Result, you can imme­di­ate­ly view your EPUB file in Adobe Dig­i­tal Editions.

If there’s a prob­lem with the file, you can fix the issue and then quick­ly regen­er­ate the content.

Step 5: Transfer the file to an iPad

After you have gen­er­at­ed the con­tent, Robo­Help cre­ates the EPUB file in a fold­er that you specified.

To syn­chro­nize the file to an iPad, ensure you have iTunes installed on your com­put­er. In addi­tion, you need to install iBooks, a free e‑reader on your iPad.

  1. Con­nect your iPad to your computer.
  2. In iTunes, click the Sum­ma­ry but­ton and select the Man­u­al­ly man­age music and videos check box.
  3. Locate the gen­er­at­ed EPUB file on your computer.
  4. Drag it to your device in iTunes.

iTunes syn­chro­nizes the file to your iPad.

Step 6: View the file in iBooks

  1. Open iBooks.
  2. In the Library in iBooks, tap the file you just transferred.
    The EPUB file appears. Here is an exam­ple of an EPUB file that is dis­play­ing in iBooks.

If you want to know more about EPUB files, check out Eliz­a­beth Cas­tro’s book EPUB Straight to the Point. 

Are we facing a “skills gap” in Information Technology?

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What new skills have you learned on your own time in the last six months?

If you’re like many IT peo­ple, you may be defer­ring to your boss when it comes to career devel­op­ment. Per­haps your com­pa­ny is ready to imple­ment a new Share­Point site and you’ve been immersed in that project for the last six months. Great. But have you been keep­ing your eye on indus­try trends on what skills are emerg­ing and those that are wan­ing? I sus­pect most peo­ple work­ing it IT would say “no.”

The June 4th edi­tion of Com­put­er­World mag­a­zine argues that com­pa­nies have lots of job open­ings but there are still many IT work­ers who are strug­gling to land jobs. The rea­son? A skills gap. The jobs are there but work­ers’ skills are not.

Todd Wein­man, a recruiter quot­ed in the arti­cle, said: “You can’t rely on a com­pa­ny for your growth and train­ing anymore…Except for a few enlight­ened com­pa­nies, if they’re train­ing you at all, they’re train­ing you for what they need, not nec­es­sar­i­ly train­ing for what you need to devel­op your tech­ni­cal skills over the long run.”

Employ­ers are clam­or­ing for can­di­dates with exper­tise in mobile app devel­op­ment, cloud com­put­ing, and busi­ness ana­lyt­ics, accord­ing to the arti­cle. But employ­ees may be tired of the self-devel­op­ment treadmill—especially if they are work­ing more than 50 hours per week.

Accord­ing to the arti­cle, here are some sug­ges­tions for thriv­ing in IT in the com­ing years:

* Cre­ate your own train­ing plan. Accord­ing a recent arti­cle pub­lished by the Har­vard Busi­ness Review, set aside a few hours each week on career development.

* Pur­sue train­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tions on your own time and at your expense. On a relat­ed note, I recent­ly read a book called the Six Fun­da­men­tals of Suc­cess by Stu­art R. Levine. Levine writes: “Take con­trol of your con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion and per­son­al growth.  Every six months, give your­self spe­cif­ic learn­ing goals…Too often peo­ple wait for their boss to tell them what skills they need. This is a stun­ning abdi­ca­tion of responsibility.”

* Devel­op soft skills, like com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

* Iden­ti­fy dif­fer­ent class­es of skills. Which tech­nolo­gies are emerg­ing, main­stream, and or lega­cy? Does your cur­rent exper­tise have a long future ahead of it? If not, what cer­ti­fi­ca­tions and train­ing do you need?

Here’s my take on it. I’ve worked about 15 years in IT and work­ers who enjoy learn­ing and are moti­vat­ed to learn appear to do bet­ter in the work­place. In con­trast, those employ­ees who decide to go on “career cruise con­trol” become vul­ner­a­ble dur­ing lay­offs because their skills are per­ceived to be “rusty.”

Obvi­ous advice? Per­haps. But many work­ers don’t seem to fol­low it. What do you think about this issue?

Check out the Com­put­er­World arti­cle.

 

SharePoint 2010 for technical writers

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When I first start­ed using Share­Point, I have to admit that I was not impressed.

The user inter­face felt unin­spired. Some soft­ware user inter­faces draw you in. For me, Share­Point was­n’t one of them. I remem­ber won­der­ing, “Why would I want to use this?”

I’ve changed my tune. After learn­ing more about Share­Point’s ben­e­fits and using it at sev­er­al client sites, I rec­og­nize that it offers a num­ber of ben­e­fits to tech­ni­cal writers:

* Share­Point pro­vides a basic Con­tent Man­age­ment Sys­tem (CMS). Peo­ple use a CMS to pub­lish, edit, and man­age con­tent, such as doc­u­ments. A full-blown CMS is expen­sive where­as Share­Point is fre­quent­ly already installed in larg­er orga­ni­za­tions. Tech­ni­cal writ­ers can use it to gain con­trol over their doc­u­ments at the file level.

* Share­Point Foun­da­tion 2010 is free. Share­Point 2010 is avail­able in two flavours: Share­Point Serv­er 2010 and Share­Point Foun­da­tion. Share­Point Serv­er offers more fea­tures than Share­Point Foun­da­tion but the lat­ter is free.

* You can use meta­da­ta to tag your files. If you are work­ing on a lot of con­tent, adding meta­da­ta to your files may be a worth­while invest­ment because it helps group your con­tent into cat­e­gories. Meta­da­ta is a col­lec­tion of cen­tral­ly man­aged terms that you can define and then use as attrib­ut­es for a file. Then, after you have tagged your con­tent, oth­er writ­ers can search for doc­u­ments using the same categories—content is eas­i­er to find and update.

* Source con­trol. Share­Point requires you to check out files before you edit them and offers ver­sion con­trol of the file. Ver­sion con­trol essen­tial­ly keeps a his­to­ry of the file. If for some rea­son you want to res­ur­rect an ear­li­er ver­sion of a doc­u­ment, Share­Point makes it easy.

* Col­lab­o­ra­tion. Share­Point enables teams to col­lab­o­rate on files. If you are work­ing with anoth­er per­son on a file, each writer can work on the con­tent con­cur­rent­ly and the lat­est ver­sion is then uploaded to the Share­Point site.

* Doc­u­ment con­trol. Share­Point makes it pos­si­ble to restrict users at the site lev­el. Best prac­tices sug­gest assign­ing employ­ees or con­trac­tors to user groups.

* Work­flows. In Share­Point, you can auto­mate the review process. As a writer, you can cre­ate a list of review­ers and add dead­lines. Share­Point then sends e‑mails to SMEs and sends you an e‑mail when they have reviewed the document.

* Trans­la­tion work­flows. If you need to trans­late your con­tent, Share­Point can assist with the process by remind­ing exter­nal stake­hold­ers to per­form tasks by cer­tain dates, and e‑mails you when all of the work is complete.

* Easy to use. Share­Point has a sim­i­lar look and feel to oth­er Microsoft Office prod­ucts. It sports the famil­iar Microsoft rib­bon and the tasks are pret­ty straight­for­ward (for tech­ni­cal writ­ers, at least).

* Lots of sup­port con­tent. There are many books, web sites, and blogs about Share­Point. For exam­ple, check out these online train­ing courses.

The bot­tom line: Share­Point is a worth­while tool if col­lab­o­ra­tion is impor­tant and you need con­trol over your source files. Sounds like a good fit for most tech­ni­cal writers.

More reasons to limit your computer time

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Most of know that sit­ting in front of a com­put­er for pro­longed peri­ods is bad for your body. A new book titled Your Brain on Nature argues that com­put­ers may also be low­er­ing our IQ, mak­ing us less empa­thet­ic, and more narcissistic.

Authors Eva Sel­hub and Alan C. Logan argue the following:

  • IQ may be low­er­ing. James Fly­nn dis­cov­ered that IQ rates were increas­ing about three to five IQ points per decade in the 20th cen­tu­ry, due to bet­ter nutri­tion, school­ing, health care, and oth­er social fac­tors. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, accord­ing to Sel­hub and Logan, stud­ies from dif­fer­ent devel­oped nations have report­ed a decline in IQ start­ing in the late 1990s. With the explo­sion of all things wireless—smartphones, com­put­ers, tablets, and video consoles—we’re inun­dat­ed and dis­tract­ed to the point that it affects our abil­i­ty to com­pre­hend infor­ma­tion. Here’s an excerpt from the book: “In the course of a 40-minute study peri­od, a sim­ple tex­ting exchange (less than three min­utes) will slash a student’s word recall in half.” Anoth­er exam­ple: a sin­gle e‑mail inter­rup­tion will con­sume about 24 min­utes for the aver­age worker.
  • Nar­cis­sism is sky­rock­et­ing. A recent study com­pares nar­cis­sis­tic atti­tudes in stu­dents between 2009 and 1994. Based on the answers the stu­dents pro­vid­ed, 89 per­cent more stu­dents appear to be more nar­cis­sis­tic than in 1994. High lev­els of nar­cis­sism appear to be cor­re­lat­ed with fre­quent dai­ly vis­i­tors to Face­book. Nar­cis­sism is a psy­cho­log­i­cal con­di­tion char­ac­ter­ized by an inflat­ed sense of self-worth and decreased empathy.
  • Empa­thy rates are decreas­ing. Many of us in North Amer­i­ca are using social media to con­nect with co-work­ers and friends. Yet for all this online con­nect­ed­ness, we’re appar­ent­ly not any more car­ing. In one study, the authors cite that “scores of empa­thet­ic concern…have dropped 49 per­cent since 1980.”
  • More screen time may lead to high­er rates of death. In a 2011 study of more than 4,500 adults fol­lowed over sev­er­al years, total screen time was asso­ci­at­ed with a 52 per­cent high­er risk of death.

Talk about a wake up call. I fre­quent­ly spend more than eight hours per day in front of a com­put­er. To mit­i­gate this seden­tary time, I try to walk or run sev­er­al times a week. If this research is cor­rect, I may be fur­ther cur­tail­ing my time online.

Is writing for mobile the next big thing?

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With all the news about the sky­rock­et­ing demand for smart­phones over­tak­ing com­put­er pur­chas­es, you might think that tech­ni­cal writ­ers would increas­ing­ly need to focus on writ­ing and deliv­er­ing user assis­tance for mobile devices.

For tech­ni­cal writ­ers, writ­ing for mobile appears to be the next big thing. Here are a few examples:

  • Mobile devices will be the pri­mary con­nec­tion tool to the Inter­net for most peo­ple by 2020, accord­ing to the Pew Research service.
  • Ref­er­ences to mobile phones and tablets are abun­dant at the Writ­er­sUA con­fer­ence and the upcom­ing Soci­ety for Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion conference.
  •  Help author­ing tools such as Mad­Cap Flare and Robo­Help tout that they sup­port pub­lish­ing con­tent for mobile devices using the ePub output.
  • There’s even a book ded­i­cat­ed to the top­ic called Devel­op­ing User Assis­tance For Mobile Apps by Joe Welinske.

So along with social media, one might think that cre­at­ing user assis­tance for mobile devices will rev­o­lu­tion­ize the way we work. There’s one prob­lem though.  In the last year, I have yet to see one job descrip­tion in Van­cou­ver that explic­it­ly refers to prepar­ing con­tent for mobile devices. When it comes to tech­ni­cal writ­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, Van­cou­ver is no Sil­i­con Val­ley but it’s not unusu­al to see five to 10 adver­tised jobs per month.

I don’t think any­one can argue that cre­at­ing user assis­tance for mobile devel­op­ment is too new. Accord­ing to Apple’s web site, there are report­ed­ly 500,000 appli­ca­tions for the iPhone and iPad. There are also thou­sands of appli­ca­tions that run on the Android oper­at­ing sys­tem.  And smart­phones have been avail­able for years. So why is there not a surge in demand for user assis­tance for mobile devices? Some guesses:

  • Soft­ware devel­op­ers are writ­ing the con­tent. While the user assis­tance writ­ten by devel­op­ers may not be pro­fes­sion­al­ly writ­ten and for­mat­ted, per­haps man­age­ment feels that the con­tent  is “good enough”? After all, if a mobile app requires a lot of doc­u­men­ta­tion, it prob­a­bly means that it’s dif­fi­cult to use. Users expect apps to be simple.
  • Per­haps writ­ing for mobile is not big as pre­dict­ed. Employ­ers in Van­cou­ver are not clam­or­ing for writ­ers with mobile expe­ri­ence.  To be fair, I searched for “tech­ni­cal writer mobile” on the U.S. job site www.dice.com and found that 41 of 649 jobs men­tioned “mobile” in the job descrip­tions. Hard­ly a tsunami!
Do you think writ­ing user assis­tance for mobile will be the next thing? Why is there not a stronger demand? I’d be inter­est­ed in your thoughts.

 

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About Me

Robert Desprez I have worked as a Vancouver technical writer for more than 20 years, working at Kodak, Boeing, Teck Resources, and FortisBC. In addition, I have worked as a writing instructor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

Contact Me

Robert Desprez Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Inc.
North Van­cou­ver, British Columbia
Canada
Phone: 604–836-4290