In this post, I’ll look at some of my favorite new features. (For a full feature list, see MadCap’s web site - http://www.madcapsoftware.com/products/flare/overview.aspx - or the “What’s New in This Version” topic in the help if you already have 9.)
Mechanical Features
Synchronization of text highlighting between XML editor and code view
In prior versions of Flare, you might see an issue in a
topic that you wanted to fix in code. The problem was that there was no way to
find that issue in the code except by eye (“find the first bullet after the
second image”) or using the Search feature. Both methods worked but weren’t
very convenient.
Flare 9 appears to have solved this problem. Now, you can
open the XML editor and code view
windows, highlight the desired text in the XML editor, and see the
corresponding text highlighted in code view, as shown below.
In my experience, most clients’ print outputs are pretty
simple. However, an avalanche of new options let you take your print output far
beyond simple, such as:
·
Support for crop marks and registration marks in
PDF outputs to help your printer determine where to cut the paper and to ensure
accurate registration in color printing.
·
Numerous mechanical enhancements for page layout
work and new page layouts for starting a first page on the left or right page.
·
Support for CMYK colors in addition to the
standard RGB.
·
More table handling options.
Flare should now be able to handle all but the most esoteric
print needs. (For a clue as to the size of the print feature set, note that the
downloadable PDF Print-Based Output Guide is almost 600 pages long!)Advanced Expressions in Condition Tags
Flare lets you apply conditions to almost any feature, like creating
conditionalized snippets that contain conditionalized variables. You can even
apply conditions to conditions, though I’ve never seen anyone do this in a real
project. (If you have done this, please let me know why and how it worked out.)
For all its power, the condition tag feature has a simple basis
– include/exclude. If you recall high school algebra, that’s a NOT statement,
with an OR statement if you applied multiple tags – e.g. the statement “not (
Primary.HOLD or Primary.Print )” tells Flare to exclude (“not”) any object to
which you applied the tags HOLD or Print from the Primary tag set. It’s easy to
understand, although it’s easy to get the wrong results if you apply different
tags to text, text paragraphs, topics, foldersful of topics, and so on.
Flare 9 boosts the power of the condition tags feature (and the
risk of confusion unless you plan your conditions carefully). The reason is
more powerful logic controlled through a more powerful option in the dialog
box. The first screen below shows the familiar, basic, mouse-driven condition
tag feature.
Here’s the same dialog box but in Advanced mode.
Here, you can use AND, OR, NOT, and () statements to create
more powerful but more complex build expressions – e.g. formulas. However, this
also adds some new things to watch out for.
·
There are no clickable selection functions other
than that Copy From Basic button; you have to type the formula, with the risk
of typos. So you have to type carefully and check your entry.
·
You can switch between Basic and Advanced modes
but the two modes work slightly differently.
·
It’s easy to get confused over the different
logical expressions. In my Flare classes, I always run a little exercise that
asks people to calculate the result of an AND expression versus an OR. People often
get it wrong the first time because the logic of conditionality differs from everyday
logic.
·
It’s easy to create a complex and powerful build
expression that you understand; what happens when you leave? If you don’t
document your build expressions, and many people don’t because project
documentation is usually something we’ll get to when we have time, your
replacement may have a lot of trouble understanding what you did.
Basically, the advanced conditional build tags feature should
let you create expressions to cover almost any need but it has to be used with
care.Large Strategic Features
Each of the features in this section is worthy of its own
post. Here, I’ll sum up the features and suggest what impact they may have and
cover them in more detail in later posts as time permits.
Office 365 Support (Word Import/Output Without Installation of Word)
For years, tech comm is typically done on a local PC. Flare
and its projects, Word and its documents, and others – all sit on your C drive.
That’s been changing with the spread of server-side version control and Flare’s
native support for working on projects on network drives. Yet sometimes you
don’t realize that a change is occurring until you reach a tipping point, in my
case my discovery that I could put the graphics for a Flare project in the
cloud and cut the size of the distributable output by 75%.
In my opinion, support for Office 365 may be that tipping
point. Flare 9 users can work in the cloud but remain in the familiar Flare
interface rather than having to bolt separate tools and processes together. The
support is still in its early stage and the help notes some limits to that
support, but this is the first step that I expect to see extended in later
versions of Flare, just as Flare 8 introduced HTML5 support and Flare 9 is now
extending it. (See below.) If you use Office 365 or are thinking about working
in the cloud in general, read about this feature.HTML5 Enhancements
Traditional WebHelp browser-based output has existed since
1998 and still works fine in most cases, but it does have some drawbacks that
are becoming increasingly obvious in this web-based era. To address these
drawbacks, MadCap added support for HTML5 output in Flare 8. (For an overview
of HTML5, see “About HTML5 (WebHelp 2.0) Output” in the help.) Flare 9 offers a
number of incremental additions to the HTML5 output to make it easier and more
flexible to use. These include:
· A search field on the index and glossary tabs.
As users type more and more letters, Flare narrows down the list of possible
hits.
· Highlighting of search hits.
· Box shadow effects for buttons on the toolbar, a
simple aesthetic feature.
In my opinion, it will be awhile before HTML5 is as popular
as WebHelp. This is because one of HTML5’s major strategic benefits, better
searchability by web crawlers for better results in a Google search, isn’t that
vital if your online material is behind a firewall and available only to
subscribers. But HTML5 has other benefits that may be enough to tip you toward
it. You can try HTML5 almost effortlessly by simply outputting an existing
projects to HTML5 and comparing the result to your usual WebHelp or CHM.eBooks and ePub3
In my experience, companies are increasingly looking at
offering their material in mobile form and Flare has steadily expanded its
mobile features since WebHelp Mobile in Flare 6 and ePub in 8. Flare 9 adds
more ePub support, including new features, supporting the new ePub3,
simplifying the esoteric process of validating ePub output, and adding mobi
output for the Kindle.
ePub and mobi don’t support all the features that Flare
offers, so you can’t just click a few buttons and get a result with a
completely satisfactory design. But the mechanics
of conversion to mobile are almost that simple. If you’ve been thinking about
moving into mobile, Flare is getting closer to letting you do that for all
mobile formats except “true” native apps and without having to buy and learn
new software.Pulse
Several versions ago, MadCap introduced the Feedback package
that let you to create a virtual, Web 2.0 style community of users who could
comment about topics in your Flare output, respond to other users’ comments,
rate topics for their usefulness, and so on. This “community” existed
independently, though you could moderate it (for obvious reasons). Feedback is
still supported, but MadCap has now released MadCap Pulse as a new and more
powerful version that lets you add a more powerful social layer to your output.
As an analogy, think of Pulse as something like a
Flare-centric LinkedIn. It supports commenting, email feeds, communities,
questions (like a survey feature), and several that I find to have the most
potential - interaction with external systems
like social media sites and helping Flare authors determine what search
synonyms, not index synonyms, are required to make searching more useful. Pulse
also lets users add to the documentation set by attaching images, movies,
additional links and other files, without affecting the documentation set
itself. You can also create controlled Communities or Groups in which to set up
discussions around specific topics and invite or restrict users to particular
Communities or Private Groups. For more
information and a video on Pulse, see http://www.madcapsoftware.com/products/pulse/Summary
Simply put, Flare is an excellent tool that continues to get
better.
About the Author
Neil has 34 years experience in technical communication,
with 28 in training, consulting, and development for various online formats and
tools including WinHelp, HTML Help, CE Help, JavaHelp, WebHelp, RoboHelp, ForeHelp,
Flare, and many now known only in legend. Neil is a columnist and frequent speaker
for various professional groups and the creator and manager of the Beyond the
Bleeding Edge stem at the STC’s annual summit.
Neil is Madcap certified for Flare and Mimic, ViziApps
certified for the ViziApps mobile app development platform, and certified in
other help authoring tools. He provides
training, consulting, and development for online help and documentation, Flare,
Mimic, other help authoring tools, mobile apps, XML, single-sourcing,
topic-based and structured authoring, and content strategy through Hyper/Word
Services. He can be reached at nperlin@concentric.net, www.hyperword.com.