Robert Desprez Communications

First Impressions of Adobe RoboHelp 2019

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Adobe just released a new ver­sion of FrameMak­er and Robo­Help last month.  If you have used the appli­ca­tion for years, you might be for­giv­en for not even rec­og­niz­ing RoboHelp—it’s been com­plete­ly revamped.

First, for such an old pro­gram (more than 25 years!), Adobe has per­formed an “extreme makeover” when it comes to the user inter­face. It’s clean and mod­ern. It looks like a new application.

RoboHelp 2019 user interface

Adobe has bestowed Robo­Help with a min­i­mal­ist user inter­face. There are not dozens of icons to click like you see in an appli­ca­tion like Microsoft Word. Even though it looks dra­mat­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent than old­er ver­sions of the pro­gram, I found myself being able to use it right away. How­ev­er, Adobe prob­a­bly rec­og­nized that not every­one wants to learn a new user inter­face so the com­pa­ny is also includ­ing Robo­Help Clas­sic 2019 for those users who pre­fer to work in famil­iar ways.

A Quick Way to Generate Output Files

I like the new way in which you can out­put files.

When you click the Quick Gen­er­ate icon, you can click the out­put you want to gen­er­ate. I like that you can cre­ate out­put files with­out a lot of con­fig­u­ra­tion. I also appre­ci­ate that you can keep work­ing while Robo­Help cre­ates the files in the back­ground. If you want to tweak set­tings for an out­put file, there’s still the Edit button.

Adobe Further Improves RoboHelp’s Search

Robo­Help 2019 builds on some of the improve­ments intro­duced in Robo­Help 2017. Most notably, Robo­Help 2017 includ­ed some wel­come improve­ments by dis­play­ing key­words as users type in the search field. For exam­ple, when I start typ­ing a search query about “con­tact­ing,” Robo­Help starts pro­vid­ing sug­ges­tions on the fly, sim­i­lar to Google’s search engine.

Robo­Help 2019 includes pre­dic­tive search but will also fix users’ typos.  For exam­ple, if I type “HTML5 out­pt,” the HTML5 Help auto­mat­i­cal­ly presents the cor­rect­ed results for me. Giv­en that many users may inad­ver­tent­ly add typos in their search queries, this is a wel­come addition.

RoboHelp 2019 Supports Git, HTML5, and Scalable Vector Graphics

Robo­Help also includes sup­port for Share­Point Online and Git, HTML5, Cas­cad­ing Style Sheets (CSS) 3, and Scal­able Vec­tor Graph­ics (SVG) images. Share­Point and Share­Point Online are not the same thing. With Share­Point Online, you can access inter­nal sites, doc­u­ments, and oth­er infor­ma­tion from anywhere—at the office, at home, or from a mobile device. Git is a ver­sion con­trol sys­tem for track­ing changes in com­put­er files and coor­di­nat­ing work on those files among mul­ti­ple people.

Over­all, I am impressed with the Adobe’s com­mit­ment to over­haul RoboHelp!

 

 

RoboHelp 2017 Delivers Improved Search

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I can­not imag­ine life with­out search and I know I am not alone. A study by Pew Inter­net found that 92 per­cent of U.S. adults who are online use search engines to find infor­ma­tion on the Internet.

When I have a prob­lem with some­thing I own, such as Apple TV, I might look up the prob­lem in the print­ed doc­u­men­ta­tion (if I still have it!), go to the manufacturer’s web site, or just type the name and mod­el of the prod­uct in Google’s search field. From my expe­ri­ence, Google often pro­vides results that are as use­ful as the manufacturer’s sup­port web site.

In a world where users have embraced search, Robo­Help 2017 includes some wel­come improve­ments by dis­play­ing key­words as you type in the search field. For exam­ple, when I start typ­ing a search query about “con­tact­ing,” Robo­Help starts pro­vid­ing sug­ges­tions on the fly, sim­i­lar to Google’s search engine. This “pre­dic­tive search” is avail­able in the Respon­sive HTML5 out­put that is shipped with the lat­est ver­sion of RoboHelp.

RoboHelp's 2017 new HTML5 output

Accord­ing to usabil­i­ty con­sul­tant Jakob Nielsen, users love search for two reasons:

  • Search lets users “con­trol their own des­tiny” and assert inde­pen­dence from com­pa­nies’ attempts to direct vis­i­tors on web sites.
  • Search is also users’ “escape hatch when they are stuck in nav­i­ga­tion.” When they can’t find a rea­son­able place to go next, they often turn to the site’s search function.

Giv­en that users love using search, it’s some­what sur­pris­ing that Nielsen found that they are often not very savvy when it comes to for­mu­lat­ing search queries.  He writes: “Typ­i­cal users are very poor at query refor­mu­la­tion: If they don’t get good results on the first try, lat­er search attempts rarely suc­ceed. In fact, they often give up.”

RoboHelp’s new search fea­ture may help mit­i­gate users’ weak­ness at writ­ing good search queries. Some oth­er ben­e­fits of RoboHelp’s search engine include:

  • Search results change, depend­ing on the posi­tion of the cur­sor: Robo­Help may dis­play dif­fer­ent terms, depend­ing on the posi­tion of the cur­sor in the search field.
  • Spell check fix­es incor­rect­ly spelled words: If users mis­spell words, the search engine rec­om­mends words that are most sim­i­lar to each word. Robo­Help accom­mo­dates for up to two mis­spelled words in each search query.
  • Search algo­rithm includes users’ search his­to­ries: Robo­Help 2017 stores past search­es in cook­ies and dis­plays any match­ing search­es in the search results.

As cus­tomers increas­ing­ly focus on search to find rel­e­vant con­tent, Robo­Help’s new search engine is a wel­come addi­tion that should improve the user experience.

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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.

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