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Creating faded edges and spotlights on screen captures with MadCap Capture |
“Like some technical writers, I habitually reach for an image-editing tool other than MadCap Capture. But having attended Paul Pehrson’s terrific session at MadWorld 2013 on Capture, I started rethinking my habit. As a MadCap Flare author, I already use Capture for callouts and for harnessing the power of variables and conditions from my Flare projects. But could I use Capture to make my screen captures more visually engaging?”
Written by Nita Beck
May 13, 2013
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MadCap Software: Working with a Dynamic Editor - An Overview in Efficiency |
“As the scale, complexities and deliverables of technical communication content have evolved, authors and content creators have an ever-increasing arsenal of software tools at their disposal. "Single Sourcing", "Visual Editing", and "Multi-Channel Publishing" are all buzzword functionalities one can now expect from a modern technical communication tool. As "features" they’re easy to describe-but providing users with an interface that is easy to use and representative of the underlying structure or styling of the content, without overloading them, is a challenge.”
Written by Jose Sermeno
March 15, 2013
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Review of MadCap Flare Version 9.0 |
“MadCap’s What’s New In this Version documentation for Flare 9.0 describes Major New Features and Additional New Features. This is a blog about markup, programming, scripting, and automating in the context of MadCap Flare. But I’ll give my two cents about some of those listed as Major New Features.”
Written by Thomas Tregner
March 13, 2013
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Top 5 things I like about Flare 9 |
“MadCap Software has released a new major version of Flare, the help authoring tool I use, with much fanfare. I focus on enhancements that are most useful to me in my daily work. They are minor compared to, say, the new support of right-to-left languages, but I appreciate them because they make my work easier! For the major enhancements, visit the Flare product website. ”
Written by Kai Weber
March 6, 2013
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MadCap Flare 9 In-Depth: Versatility for Complex Help Authoring Projects |
“Flare’s wizard-based system is a joy to use. I am a longstanding command-line and text-editor devotee, but even I have to admit that a good GUI-based system is more effective and efficient in many circumstances. By using the appropriate wizard, you can create a new project, import a project, create or edit a stylesheet, export a project in one fell swoop, or other important tasks. Although I am sure there are ways to mess your project up, it is much harder to do so when choices are guided and constrained. One might say that Flare is “idiot-proof”, but I prefer to say that Flare helps protect a tech writer from the inevitable distractions faced during a typical day at the office.”
Written by Lois R Patterson
March 5, 2013
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An Overview Look at MadCap Mimic 7 |
“Mimic is a visual help or software simulation authoring tool from MadCap Software, maker of Flare. Mimic is available alone or as part of the MadPak suite, which includes Flare, Contributor, Analyzer, Capture, and Lingo. In this post, I’ll discuss what visual help/software simulation authoring tools in general and Mimic in particular do overall, then look at some specifics in Mimic and changes in v.7.”
Written by Neil Perlin
March 5, 2013
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TechWhirl First Look: Madcap Flare 9 |
“As usual, MadCap has listened to the users and made great updates to their flagship authoring tool, Flare 9. If you have never used any version of MadCap Flare before, this program is a must if you’re attempting any kind of single sourcing project. If you’re already a Flare fan, you may find that upgrading from version 8 just makes a good thing even better.”
Written by Andrea Altenburg
March 2, 2013
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Quick Search Form for HTML5 Output |
“Here is a quick search form you can use on another page to open an HTML5 output search in the skin. To use it, change the value for uri (third line) to the URL for your Flare HTML5 help system’s main file. Then place the script and markup in the page markup where you want the form to appear on a web page.”
Written by Thomas Tregner
February 27, 2013
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Desktop Publishing Tool MadCap Flare Is Great for Complex Projects |
“While a typical word processing program is often focused on ease of use, and a desktop publishing program on design of output, Flare's strengths are in content management and is driven by a "write once, publish anywhere" paradigm. Documents in Flare are composed of Topics, which can be of any size. Topics are organized in the Content Explorer, using a typical hierarchical folder system. ”
Written by Ian Harac, PCWorld
April 26, 2011
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MadCap Flare for New Adopters |
“MadCap Flare is making headway as part of the technical documentation toolkit in New Zealand and overseas. In December 2012 and January 2013, I had substantial conversations with three different professional colleagues who were considering MadCap Flare. ”
Written by Emily Cotlier
January 31, 2013
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Single Sourcing Screen Captures to Print, Online, and Mobile Using Flare and Capture |
“The other week my colleague asked me to write down a few notes about how I handle images with Flare. I realized there’s a lot to know about images, especially when trying to single source them both to print and online outputs. In this post, I’ll jot down a few of the more tricky points when it comes to single sourcing images.”
Written by Tom Johson
January 20, 2013
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Some Initial Observations about MadCap Flare 8 |
“MadCap released Flare 8 last week. As usual, it has a mix of enhancements to existing features and some interesting new features. Here's my quick take on what I view as the most significant…”
Written by Neil Perlin
March 5, 2012
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MadCap Flare version 8 is released |
“We just installed version 8 of MadCap Flare and we thought we would share some of the new updated features. Our perspective of Flare is geared toward the ability to help our customers translate and publish their content in multiple languages as easily as possible. ”
Written by Peter Argondizzo
March 5, 2012
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Flare v8 Review |
“Today MadCap Software released version 8 of its flagship help authoring tool, MadCap Flare, and I think there is a whole lot to like about it. I was lucky enough to be a beta tester for Flare v8, and I'm excited to share with you some of the great new features you'll find in v8. ”
Written by Paul Pehrson
March 2, 2012
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What's Become of Adobe FrameMaker? |
“I am sad to report that I have seen a precipitous drop in FrameMaker-based projects over the past few years. I'd estimate that anywhere from 30-40% of our FrameMaker business is gone. Instead, more and more customers are asking us to create content using XML editors, such as Arbortext and XMetaL. ”
Written by Content Rules
November 14, 2011
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The Passion Quotient |
“You've never heard of the passion quotient? That's because I just made it up. For example, if 5 authors report that they use Tool X and it is very important (5 on a scale from 1 to 5), then Tool X scores a perfect 5 PQ.”
Written by Sarah O'Keefe
December 15, 2011
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MadCap Lingo V5 is here! |
“MadCap Lingo is a tool we use regularly to assist clients in translating the content in their MadCap Flare projects. Lingo allows us to easily translate all the required content in a help system without corrupting the navigation and intended flow of the help system.”
Written by Argo Translation Inc
August 31, 2011
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Blog Post: Moving from Adobe FrameMaker to MadCap Flare |
“Moving from Adobe® FrameMaker® to MadCap Flare™ is easy. To get the best results, we recommend you do some planning before you start to import your existing content. The document below outlines our best practices for converting from FrameMaker to Flare, including suggestions such as how to make the import as clean as possible and using FrameMaker as an editor while generating your Help through Flare.”
Written by MadCap Simon
June 6, 2011
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A Flare for Translation, By Scott Bass |
“Technical communicators wield real power. (I forgive you for reading that twice.) Yes, you wield real power. This may contradict your perception of your position in the corporate food chain. However, as the provider of translation services, from where I sit, you are truly powerful and can make the lives of numerous translators, project managers and desktop publishing (DTP) specialists blissful or hellish.”
Written by Scott Bass
Spring, 2011
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Author-it and MadCap Flare comparison, Anne Gentle |
“I've had more than a few questions asking for a review of Author-it or MadCap Flare or a comparison of both. So I decided to do some homework. Initially, I wasn't sure why they are categorized together. Is it due to the price point? Or is it due to the single-sourcing all-in-one software package aspect? I suspect it's the latter since the former seems more disparate lately.”
Written by Anne Gentle
February 10, 2009
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Streamlining Your Workflow with Flare 7 |
“Since its introduction in early 2006, MadCap Flare™ has maintained a steady course of evolution. Flare users have fostered this evolution through proactive feedback. MadCap obviously listens. Each new version of Flare has shown that the company understands its users, and Flare 7 is no exception. Packed with impressive new features and enhancements, Flare 7 provides full support for information development teams and their workflows.”
Written by Eddie VanArsdall
March 19, 2011
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What's New in Flare 7 - QR Codes |
“Continuing my posts about features in version 7 of MadCap Flare… Here, I'll look at one of the more unusual features – QR Codes. QR codes are one of those features that's so unusual that the first reaction is "um, yes..." followed by "Whoa!" (Another such feature is the toggler link.) If you've recently seen something that looks like this, you saw a QR code.”
Written by Neil Perlin
March 12, 2011
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Flare V7: an impressive iteration |
“Flare 7 has an impressive list of new features; it seems that the folks at MadCap have had a busy year. In just less than a year since V6 was released they have released the following new features. This list is NOT comprehensive, and is roughly ranked in order of how excited I am about these features.”
Written by Paul Pehrson
March 9, 2011
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Flare v7 Alias Editor Improvements |
“I build a lot of context-sensitive help for my clients so I am uber-familiar with the Alias Editor in Flare. We have a love-hate relationship. I love it because it makes my job easier but I hate it because it's annoying and ugly. But the new Alias Editor in v7 is wonderful. Upon first glance, it just looks better – and I'm not just talking about the pretty colors. I'm talking about usability (and I do not purport to be a usability expert!). But guess what, it works better too!”
Written by Laura Johnson
March 3, 2011
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What's New in Flare 7 |
“Flare 7 adds many new features, including more powerful SharePoint support, native Subversion support, support for vector graphic formats like EPS and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), linking to external files to use in multiple projects, a revised editor for adding and maintaining context-sensitivity codes, the ability to preview topics in any target you defined, the ability to view generated output in any browser on your PC, QR (Quick Response) codes, an equation editor that uses MathML (Mathematics Markup Language), numerous enhancements to table support, and more.”
Written by Neil Perlin
March 7, 2011
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Flare v7 is Here - Cue Angels and Choir! |
“I'll admit freely, I dig Flare…and the newest release of Flare has me all atwitter. I saw the new stuff as a beta tester and I could NOT WAIT for the release. The folks at MadCap have added some really incredible features that take Flare even further beyond Word and Robo. Here are some of the new things I'm most excited about: Tight integration with Subversion (At last!). Table enhancements. Increased support for Section 508 compliance.”
Written by Laura Johnson
March 2, 2011
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MadCap Lingo 4.0: Jumping the Gap Between Authoring and Translation |
“In the growing landscape of translation memory tools, MadCap Lingo inhabits a special niche; no other tool fits so snugly in the content authoring and translation supply chain. The newest version, MadCap Lingo 4.0, brings new features that will appeal to both translators and technical publication departments who can use MadCap Lingo to manage their translation assets.”
Written by Scott Bass
November/December, 2011
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Using Flare with a Mac - It Can Be Done |
“Truth be told, I've used PCs and Windows since what seems like the dawn of time. I wrote papers in college using WordStar in DOS, took my Master's degree Comps in Word for DOS…and then finally moved in to Windows. For the past twenty years, I've used Windows machines and products – and have dealt with crashes, BSODs, etc, for just as long.”
Written by Laura Johnson
July 5, 2010
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Review of MadCap Flare V6 |
“If you are a technical communicator who pays attention to the latest releases of help authoring tools, you probably heard that MadCap Software released a new version of its flagship product, MadCap Flare. I've been using Flare V6 for a couple of months now, and this review is to give you an end user's review of the features and enhancements Flare V6 has to offer. ”
Written by Paul Pehrson
April 11, 2010
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MadCap Offers Native Support for Mobile Publishing |
“XML-based technical authoring tool provider MadCap is back with a pretty sizable load of updates. In addition to the newest releases of their product suites-MadPak and MadPak ML (multilingual)-their publishing software, Flare 6.0, has added support for authoring to mobile devices. ”
Written by Chelsi Nakano
April 11, 2010
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Generating Quality Print Output from MadCap Flare or Blaze |
“Although MadCap Flare is known primarily as a Help Authoring Tool (HAT), one of its outstanding qualities is its ability to generate high-quality print documentation from the same source files as for the Help. In fact, its print capabilities has been engineered to the extent that MadCap Software has been able to market another product called Blaze, which is basically the same authoring tool as Flare but with the capability to generate only the print-based outputs including PDF, Word, and FrameMaker-effectively Flare without the Help outputs.”
Written by Mathew Ellison
March 16, 2012
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Adding Flare to Your Translation Tool Kit |
“This is the inaugural Translation Tool review post on TranslationWire. And, ironically, the tool I am going to review is not strictly for translation. I am compelled to talk about MadCap Software's Flare Single-Source Publishing application. Flare was created by the original designers of RoboHelp. I guess the smart people who came up with RoboHelp back in the 90's got tired of seeing their brainchild being bought and sold like an old Honda Accord. They finally broke out on their own and put their best ideas into developing Flare.”
Written by Scott Bass
March 16, 2012
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The Writer's Rough Guide to Everything Flare |
“Roughly Everything about Flare. All things Flare, Capture, MadCap Lingo and Analyzer.”
March 2, 2012
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Discovering Relationship Tables |
“Lately I've been creating context-sensitive help for an online application. As part of my strategy, I've been trying to follow Theresa Putkey's advice in "Usability in Context-Sensitive Help." In her article, Theresa recommends providing more than just the steps for a specific task in the context-sensitive help window. Instead, she says to show more contextual links, including answers to why, when, and who questions, because too frequently the user who searches for help may have needs outside the specific task you describe.”
August 3, 2009
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Pre-Release Review of Flare V5 |
“Let me begin by saying that I love Flare, and I think Flare 5 is a great enhancement on an already great product. I am biased; I'm a certified Flare instructor, have been a VIP in the Flare Forums for 2+ years, and am a certified MadCap Advanced Developer for Flare V4. But being biased doesn't necessarily make me wrong (grin). I'm under NDA for this project, but I've received permission to give you a preview of what you can expect from the soon-to-be-released version 5.”
Written by Paul Pehrson
June 3, 2009
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Is MadCap Flare a Better Tool than RoboHelp? |
“One of the questions I get asked from technical writers and content managers is whether or not they should move to Madcap Flare. Many of you will have already invested time and energy in RoboHelp (when it was owned by Macromedia), and now that it is part of the Adobe family, may have some thoughts about its long term viability. RoboHelp was, and still is, a great product. But Flare has a lot going for it to. Here are few reasons you should save your RoboHelp budget and upgrade to MadCap Flare.”
Written by Scott DeLoach
March, 2009
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All the reasons to be Mad about it!!! |
“Madcap is the brainchild of people who had moved in from diverse sectors of documentation and can be safely labeled as the complete solution for ALL documentation requirements of a company.”
Written by MK Anderson
March 20, 2009
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MadCap Flare: First Impressions |
“I've started the migration to MadCap Flare. I chose a simple project for my first one, a short story. See? I do use FrameMaker for everything. I wanted to submit a short story to a contest that ended last month. I had these templates for manuscript submission I've been using for years. MadCap claims Flare can completely replace FrameMaker. We shall see.”
Written by MK Anderson
February 10, 2009
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MadCap Flare 4.2: A Welcome Update |
“Users of MadCap Flare were greeted in their e-mail inboxes today with the announcement of an update to Flare V4.2. If you missed it, it might be because it was buried in a message about the new Feedback Server 2 that is now available. To get all the benefits from Feedback Server 2, you have to upgrade to Flare 4.2. That said, I'm not a Feedback user, so I don't have a lot to comment about on that front. Instead, I'll focus on some major improvements in Flare 4.2 that make this upgrade a "must."”
Written by Paul Pehrson
February 2, 2009
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Why I Want to Bust a MadCap in Adobe® Ass |
“I'm a technical writer. Have been for more than 15 years. I have used FrameMaker since it was at version 2 and was owned by company called Frame. I have owned RoboHELP Since the early days of Blue Sky Software who used to spam my work fax with "specials". Both Blue Sky and Frame eventually found their way into Adobe's family of products.”
Written by MK Anderson
January 14, 2009
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RoboHelp® Vs Flare |
“Recently I needed to choose a help authoring tool for a client. I figured RoboHelp or Flare would do. After reviewing the RoboHelp features list, I downloaded the new version of RoboHelp, part of Adobe's Technical Communication Suite. I figured that Flare and RoboHelp would basically be the same now that RoboHelp has added snippets and variables. Well, amazingly enough (or not), I was not impressed with RoboHelp at all. Even though Flare is a bit more expensive once you purchase the Madpak and Acrobat, I gave these reason to the client for choosing Flare instead of RoboHelp”
Written by Theresa Putkey
July 25, 2008
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MadCap Flare, the help author's dream tool |
“First, I'd like to talk a little about MadCap Flare, the new software I began using a little over a month ago. It's really top-notch. I've lucked into a great situation here at my new job, since I'm the first (and currently only) technical writer. So, I got to pick the software program I wanted to use. After a week of serious comparisons, I chose Flare. ”
Written by The docuMentor
August 7, 2008
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More Tech Write Tips |
“In this post we dig a little deeper into Flare's neat XML Editor. If you've not read the previous post on this it would probably be a good idea to swing by and read that first.”
January 11, 2007
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Help Authoring Tool Surveys |
“Recently the Hat Matrix Blog (aka, the Mad Hatter) published the results of a tools survey that included 590 participants. The respondents were asked what authoring tools they used on a regular basis. They answered as follows”
October 15, 2008
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MadCap Flare 4 Preview (aka Ten Things to Love about Flare 4) |
“In today's post, I'll give you a brief rundown of several new features and changes in Flare 4. In the next several days, I'll flesh out each topic with more detailed information about how it works, and what you can expect. After Flare 4 is released (soon, I'm told; very soon….) I'll blog with some tips and tricks for migrating from Flare 3 to Flare 4. So, here we go with ten things to love about Flare 4.”
Written by Paul Pehrson
September 2, 2008
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Content Reuse Wrap up: Putting it all together |
“When we talk about content reuse, we mean writing content once and then creating multiple outputs from that single source of content. Flare is a help authoring tool created by MadCap Software that allows you to single source your content in powerful ways. Flare includes tools for using variables, snippets, and conditional text to create a powerful source from which you can create multiple output targets.”
Written by Paul Pehrson
December 1, 2007
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A first in the industry. Flare supports two different work flows… |
“I'm proud to welcome another sponsor to the Tech Writer Voices podcast: MadCap Flare. You may be wondering exactly what sponsorship involves. Basically, it's different for each company, but I'm offering promotion on my podcasts in exchange for a free copy of the company's product. This is actually something that Heidi Hansen, my co-host, encouraged me to do long ago.”
November 5, 2007
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Emerging technologies applied to technical writing |
“I'm excited to upgrade to RoboHelp 6, but would you believe that RoboHelp 6 isn't compatible with Word 2007? Oh my.”
January 18, 2007
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The Art of Writing Technical Articles |
“Help Authoring Articles for Software Developers”
January 1, 2007
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Coredump: New product announcements- MadCap Feedback Server |
“In their continuing drive to totally dominate the technical communication world, MadCap Software have announced yet another new product – the MadCap Feedback Server.”
April 1, 2007
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Coredump: New product announcements- MadCap Lingo |
“MadCap Software seem bent on filling every possible niche in the technical communication software market. Yesterday, they announced MadCap Lingo, a translation tool.”
May 1, 2007
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Flare and AuthorIt |
“Recently, I've been evaluating Flare and AuthorIt for a client. They're moving away from RoboHelp since this product is, in the words of another blogger "craptastic". I can't even get a printed documentation output to work, but I really don't feel like bothering either. If it is inherently craptastic, then I won't be able to fix the problem!”
Written by Theresa Putkey
August 25, 2007
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WritersUA: Training and Information for User Assistance Professionals |
“Better UX through Better UA. Training and Information for User Assistance Professionals”
January 1, 2006
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Tech Write Tips |
“The first of our mini-series of tips for Flare, here we consider how to leverage that old RoboHelp licence to squeeze some extra information out on your Flare HTMLHelps. ”
July 6, 2006
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Six Reasons to Love Flare |
“You may not be able to tell from that post, but I absolutely love Flare. I think it is a fantastic product. Truth be told, I've only used two HATs, Flare and RoboHelp X3, so my experience is understandably limited. However, I'm so pleased with Flare, in general, that I'm not even interested in considering other tools.”
Written by Paul Pehrson
June 18, 2007
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