The next dedicated online course with live sessions starts April 20, 2019 Today’s the day! I just scheduled the start (next Tuesday) of a dedicated session of my Creating Content with FrameMaker course. Dedicated sessions are a bridge between a course and a face-to-face class. They run about 4 weeks and include weekly live screensharing and troubleshooting sessions…

I’ll be speaking at the Technical Documentation Roundup on May 22nd, 2019. This conference, put together by Scott Abel and his team at The Content Wrangler, features dozens of great speakers and I’m honored to be included. Here’s the rest of the description for my session…I hope to see you there! Separate Content from Formatting…

Adobe released an update for RoboHelp 2019 today. Adobe released an update to RoboHelp 2019 today. You can access this free update either by using the Help > Updates command in RoboHelp or by visiting https://www.adobe.com/support/robohelp/downloads.html Here’s what’s been added and fixed: Feature enhancements List enhancements In CSS editor, you can now define the spacing between…

In March, 2019 I presented this topic to the LA InDesign User Group. Not only was the content well-received, but Adobe asked me to repeat the conversation in a recorded webinar, to be scheduled in a few months. I’ve put a few of my points into the content below, but what would you want to…

I’m happy to announce that Adobe has chosen me again as the Adobe Ambassador to the TC Camp Unconference, at San Jose State University on April 27, 2019. This is a great event that includes my free Ambassador workshop, Tech Comm Survival Merit Badge Training, as well as the free Unconference in the afternoon. The…

Calling all aspiring FrameMaker structured authors template designers! My Structured Authoring and Structured EDD development workbooks are now available for ordering in the Books section in the menu above. I’ve gone through all the lessons and exercise files, and updated all the screen captures to match the FrameMaker 2019 release. I’ve also redesigned the covers…

Adobe released FrameMaker 2019 Update 3 today. Use the Help > Updates menu item in FrameMaker 2019 to update, or visit https://supportdownloads.adobe.com/product.jsp?product=22&platform=Windows to download the updater manually. Interested in FrameMaker 2019 training? See TRAINING in the menu above for a free Introduction to FrameMaker 2019 course, as well as courses in advanced authoring and template design…

Content nirvana: A state of content bliss, free from the repetitive effort and suffering associated with digital publishing and ad hoc formatting. How to get there The first step on this path is to understand where your time is currently being spent, and in particular, where you are spending time on things other than content creation…

You’ll need to do two things prior to publishing CSH with FrameMaker: Create CSH markers Create and edit a map (.h) file To publish context-sensitive Help, you need markers in your documents that FrameMaker can use to create links in your output for your developers. FrameMaker uses TopicAlias markers to store map ID information in…

Adobe released RoboHelp 2019 Update 5 today. Use the Help > Updates menu item in RoboHelp 2019 to update, or visit https://www.adobe.com/support/robohelp/downloads.html to download the updater manually. (Manual download not yet posted as of Feb 7, 2019, 1:40 pm PST) Interested in RoboHelp 2019 training? I’m running a discounted early adopter training class the week of February…

A client this week ran into a common tech comm problem: She needed to manage a document title, version number, and revision date across a number of documentation sets for her end clients. And she didn’t want to manually update these three pieces of content across dozens of manuals, and hundreds of documents. We decided…

I’ve used the icons available in the free Font Awesome font to create cool custom bullet icons for a couple of years now. It’s easy to download, and even the free version has over 1,400 high-quality icons to choose from. Setting up FontAwesome There are a number of ways to use this great resource, but…

I sent out an email yesterday to let the Tech Comm Tools community know about a position in Santa Clara, CA, and as a result got wind of another available job in Bothell, WA. Feel free to send me news of available positions for Adobe TCS writers and I’ll try to keep this list up-to-date.…

Adobe released RoboHelp 2019 Update 4 today. Use the Help > Updates menu item in RoboHelp 2019 to update, or visit https://www.adobe.com/support/robohelp/downloads.html to download the updater manually. Following is a list of the feature enhancements and fixes. Feature Enhancements Import and link FrameMaker files You can now import and link FrameMaker files (.fm, .mif, and .book) in Robohelp. You…

Adobe released the second updater for FrameMaker 2019 today. As always, you can run the updater from the FrameMaker Help menu to download this free update. Here’s a list of the enhancements in Update 2, as well as a list of bugs that should now be fixed. Check out the issues fixed in Update 1…