Description:
RoboHelp is undoubtedly the leader in help authoring, and with the release of RoboHelp X3, a number of new features are at your fingertips. X3 builds on RoboHelp's existing easy user interface, super flexibility, and reliability. With X3, the eHelp Corporation now focuses on giving users more control over the look and feel of their projects. We test-drove X3 with a project created in RoboHelp Office 2002. The conversion was smooth, and we found a handful more options about our online display, including new skins and an output-to-pure-HTML option. Even more impressive is the new power to generate Section 508-compliant help to ensure your projects meet federal regulations. We focused largely on the single-source capabilities for outputting online help and printed documentation. The batch operation was simple, allowing us to select the kind of outputs we wanted. Until now, printed documentation was largely considered a separate project because of the difference in presentation and design. This is no longer the case, with X3. We found the conversion process to a printed form to be exact and handsome. Designed for users with Word 2000 or later, the printed documentation makes use of styles, indexing, and many of Word's features for longer manuscripts. Supporting batch processing is X3's new and improved conditional-text functions. For those out there developing help for multiple versions of a project, conditional text expands the single-source concept by allowing you to designate selected portions to be included or omitted from a final project. After an initial learning curve, this feature makes sense and is easy to incorporate. With this version, RoboHelp continues to earn its title as the industry standard for creating help sections. If you already own a version of RoboHelp you may not need to upgrade just yet. Still, if you're looking to buy your first edition of RoboHelp, X3 makes sense. --Emilie Herbst
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