Review: Adobe Robohelp 6 debuts with a number of helpful features
Feature: Redesign of 40 page SQLite documentation tests Robohelp's mettle

Full disclosure. I have used Macromedia and now Adobe's Robohelp for various documentation jobs large and small. I have largely been satisfied with the the tool; particularly the fairly HTML savvy and friendly interface plus wide range of cross platform Help targets that Robohelp supports:
Linux, Mac, Unix, Windows and cross browser (IE6 or IE7, Mozilla Firefox 1.5++, Netscape Navigator 8.x, Opera 9.x, and Safari 1.x) output in a variety of formats including HTML frames and Flash output with either total client or total server side support. The total server support requires extra cost Adobe RoboHelp Server but then provides 1)faster page delivery, 2)natural language searches, and 3)help page usage statistics not available with the regular, standalone client help. In addition, RoboHelp also provides other popular output formats including classic Microsoft WinHelp, HTML Help, JavaHelp, and Oracle Help formats.

RoboHelp HTML Interface

One of the most distinctive features of Robohelp is that it provides documentors with two interfaces for doing their documentation - a Dreamweaver-like HTML interface(Robohelp HTML, see screenshot just above) or a Microsoft Word based interface (RoboHelp Word). As might be expected, it is easier in RoboHelp Word to develop output for WinHelp and classic Microsoft Help formats.

In addition, RoboHelp has pioneered a number of innovations in the documentation field including:
1) use of skins, CSS styles and templates for styling topics and help pages;
2)providing a Link View and Broken Links for tracking down erroneous references;
3)Context sensitive help linking external applications to specific topics in the help system;
4)ease using Flash animations and Captivate demo videos in help files - new feature in RH6;
5)enhanced conditional output tags for multiple helpfiles from the same base - new features in RH6;
6)natural language help file queries.
Once again, with some of its new features, RoboHelp continues to refine Help file delivery. But perhaps the most important feature is the cross platform and cross browser delivery of top notch help systems. With RoboHelp Source Control groups of documentors can draw on a large compendium of help files and resources knowing that those objects are save from inadvertent simultaneous updates. These resources then can be targeted to a variety of uses. For example, one organization packages updates and tips for their systems in WinHelp file format because that guarantees the widest possible delivery to a diverse and widely dispersed user community.

How to Cover RoboHelp 6

But recently I was posed with a problem - how to do a novel and interesting review of Robohelp 6 which I have already described in 3 detailed reviews just 2 years ago:
RoboHelp - this is the main review of Robohelp 5
RoboHelp Simple - which looks at creating a simple help system for Colormania utility using RoboHelp 5
RoboHelp Word - which describes the ins and outs of the Word interface to Robohelp 5
So to find a novel approach to RoboHelp 6 was first on the agenda

However, a second problem, arose that has helped in reviewing RoboHelp 6. I have had to convert the SQLite online documentation as resource which I have just added to theOpenSourcery.com. This is a required tool because SQLite has just been added to the list of followed SQL databases at theOpensourcery.com. I needed to convert SQLite's .HTML helpfiles with all online references to a RoboHelp style WebHelp file that could be used on a PC or posted to a website and be equally effective. In addition, I wanted to make some simple immediate changes to the SQLite help system. Add some color highlighting, correct some obvious spelling and grammar errors, add more context sensitive see-also references to the header of each help page, plus change some of the external online references in the header to local references.

Finally I wanted to add more screenshots and examples to the helpfiles - particularly for the SQL Select and CMDline operations. I would create multiple versions of the SQLite helpfiles based on the newly enhanced conditional build tags. The resulting files would be my own personal SQLite reference but also would be made available to the public as theOpenSourcery.com reference pages.

So the conversion of SQLite documentation problem turned out to be a solution to how to approach this review. I decided to use the SQLite makeover as the point of reference for finding out all about the new RoboHelp 6. It helped that some of my conversion involved putting conditional build tags and making some styling changes. Also I would get a chance to try the new Robohelp image capture utility. In short, this review is a classic update-the-documentation job transformed into a "kill-two-birds-with-one-stone" review.

So What's New in Robohelp 6

As always when using a new system I check out the What's New and RoboHelp is no exception. Here is my list of the best new features in Robohelp 6:

Simplification and cleaning up of Conditional Builds:

-its easier to mark topics, books and text for conditional build
-topics and text marked for conditional now have color coded stroking through them so its easier to tell visually what will be excluded from specific builds
-the conditional build process is simplified especially for batch builds
-more methods to attach conditional build tags to topics, books and sections of topics

Simplification and better integration of RoboSource Control
-Speed and bandwidth-efficiency: RoboSource Control works even over dial-up connections and the speed improvements are notable on collaborative documentation projects.
-Enhanced development functionality and ease of backup: Using SQL Server/MSDE database provides more options for database operations and development.
-Another benefit of SQL Server use is offline operation with full replication capabilities when returning online.
-New multi-file History Explorer in RSC: The multi-file History Explorer provides greater flexibility when attempting to view or recover historical versions of files, folders, or entire projects.
-Automatic detection of foreign languages: Intelligent code parsers implemented in this release enable RoboHelp to detect and understand several languages. This aids automatic documentation, and enables a sophisticated merging of files, which may contain differences in the context of different languages. This is a feature I have yet to test in detail.
-As with RoboHelp, RSC also fixes a number of MS Windows Explorer bugs eliminating need for tedious hacks.

Added more robust RoboScreenCapture tool whose features compare to Techsmith's Snagit:

RoboScreenCapture free utility with Robohelp 6
-Ability to capture screens in 10 efficient modes, including Free Hand, Virtual Screen, and Multi-Region.
-Ability to save images in over 20 image formats - good for cross platform help systems.
-Ability to add identity stamps to every screen capture, such as the company name or logo.
-Ability to edit images easily by performing the following tasks:
o Add image stamps, frames, and drop shadows.
o Change image colors, flip or rotate images, and crop images to a smaller size.
o Add call-outs to specific areas of a capture using shapes, and shadow effects.
This not quite the functionality and ease of use of Snagit but it is several steps ahead of say Corel Capture.

Integrate better with Adobe tools directly from Robohelp:
-direct Adobe Captivate calls from menus and buttons for easy insertion of demo videos
-RoboScreen Capture is in Tools tab of Project Pane
-Adobe Framemaker import easier and more reliable
-PDF File import is faster, and has more options - for example we imported a 100 page file where 1 page=1topic in less than 2 minutes with all styling , colors, links and images well preserved in Robohelp 6
-PDF File output settings and integration with newly included Acrobat Elements

Enhanced a number of Robohelp features:
-Better Report options and customization for RoboHelp Server users (WebHelp Pro and FlashHelp Pro)
-Also better Reports for Single User for Conditional Builds, Broken Ids, and Map IDs
-Easier access to and usability of the Glossary wizard
-Better migration of WinHelp to WebHelp and other formats
-Many small fixes to JavaScript, styles, skins and HTML in WebHelp and as used with IE or early browsers
-Easier access to TOC-Table of Contents properties
-More convenient See Also and Related Topics wizards for setup

So there are many solid improvements to a well regarded product with perhaps the grunt work of better conditional build tags (see our SQLite project below for more details) and better overall RSC-RoboSource Control performance and functionality standing out. But also the integration of Captivate, RoboScreen Capture, and PDF makes things urn more smoothly. As we shall see in our Missing Improvements section just below, there appears to be a missed opportunity in integrating RoboHelp HTML better with Dreamweaver.

Missed RoboHelp Improvements

Now here is my list of what's missing in the improvements to Robohelp 6. This is a scary item because some are repeat missing items from previous reviews of RoboHelp 5 (see review here) . Both Macromedia and Adobe have a history of leaving good things out of their software for no apparent reason. Think a Visual IDE designer for Dreamweaver, JavaScript & PHP debuggers for Dreamweaver, settle on one scripting language for Photoshop, improve the graphic designer in Flash, etc, etc. So here goes our dirty laundry list:
1)Provide a better editor for CSS stylesheets. Dreamweaver has one model or just use a text editor but even the current Robohelp 6 CSS editor is just so awkward.
2)Provide for multiple tabs for editing multiple Help topics at the same time. Again Dreamweaver or Madcap Flare provide the examples. At the very least, provide titling so users know what topic is currently being edited. RoboHelp 6 still keeps users waiting for these improvements.
3)Provide more robust templating. Contribute and Dreamweaver provide the example of how users can work on various parts of a topic simultaneously while being prevented from tampering with any other section. Finally, the templates can provide a great deal of boilerplate code, with user variables or direct edits filling in the blanks. Robohelp 6 does provide better variables - but the model is far from the Dreamweaver+Contribute polish.
4)Provide more AJAX-like scripting support. For example Dreamweaver's Spry Framework really has some nice GUI components that would work well in Robohelp(trees, accordion topics, popup dialogs - some of the things one can see in RoboHelp 6's own help system, but which do not appear in any "how to do this" manual.
5)Provide a scripting language for Robohelp. Some of the new user variables and multiple batch processing available in RoboHelp 5 and 6 are moving in the right direction - as are the the JavaScript, C, and Java integration APIs for developers. But while Photoshop has a surplus of scripting languages - Robohelp, which could really use it, suffers in comparison.
6)Fix the WYSIWYG editor in RoboHelp HTML. Its CSS stylings are simply wrong at times. And drag and drop of components just at the window pane level would be very helpful.
7)Likewise the the Source editor needs fixes. The color scheme just goes "off" and "on" inexplicably. There is no code completion or coding hints which could be helpful as in Dreamweaver.
8)The Find & Replace utility is weak in comparison to Dreamweaver's tools - it could use a friendly boost.
Does anybody see a pattern here ? Yes I appreciate the link to Captivate in RoboHelp 6 since I think demo videos and quizzes with auto-pointing to remedial topics is the direction Help systems will go in. But a stronger link between Robohelp HTML and Dreamweaver CS3, where the latter recognizes Robohelp projects as a "special site file" would be a wonderful compliment to Robohelp - especially the RoboHelp HTML interface. There is already precedence with the link between Contribute+Dreamweaver.

I can tell the Adobe people that I am constantly sneaking over to Dreamweaver CS3 to do many of these things already; but occasionally I get tripped up in changing things like links and Flash videos or CSS styles, that Robohelp is managing as well.

How RoboHelp 6 Helped with SQLite Helpfile Makeover

Now remember what I had when starting with SQLite makeover - about 40 Web based .html files all with full web address links (typically <a href="http://www.sqlite.org/faq.html">FAQ</a> ). There were very few image files and no Flash or Applets. But the layout of the original, using one HTML table, is visually appealing and effective. So I did not change the layout or styling of the original helpfiles.

So the importing of these 40 pages was fairly simple. I downloaded the complete pages to a sqlitedocs folder, fired up RoboHelp 6, created a new empty project in the same sqlitedocs folder. Then I hoped the Import command was as easy as I remembered to use.

It turned out to be exactly so. File | Import | HTML File is the menu command. Robohelp allows the user to specify more than one file on import (use the SHIFT or CTRL key when pointing with the mouse). So I imported all 40 files in one swoop and was delighted to see that all 40 files were imported and appeared as separate topics in the Project pane of Robohelp.

The only snafu was that every topic pointed to its own copy of the SQLite.gif "feather-light" GIF image file. On other imports of image rich site this could be more of a problem. I edited 40 topics to point to one GIF file - and did this in Dreamweaver, since as noted the Robohelp Find and Replace utility is not as powerful as the one in Dreamweaver. However, when I changed global links( href=http://www.sqlite.org/sqlang_attach.html) to local ones (href=sqlang_attach.html) in Dreamweaver, I got caught out because some of the links were treated as broken in Robohelp. Solution - do all of my Dreamweaver HTML editing before importing the files into RoboHelp.

The next set of edits involved changing some grammar errors, adding highlights, and changing the first column of links in each topic's header to more context sensitive ones. For example, for the Create Table topic I made the five see-also links Drop Table, Create Index, Create Trigger, Create, View, and Create VTab. For these type edits and corrections, the combined WYSIWYG and True Code editors in RoboHelp 6 proved more than equal to the task.

Next I added 3 books to the Topics tab of the Project Pane - SQLite Overview, SQLite SQL Syntax, and SQLite APIs. In the topics pane its was trivial to drag and drop the topics one by one into the book I wanted the topic to be a part of. Equally quick was the creation of a TOC-Table of Contents for the complete helpfile. I let the Auto-create TOC button in the Topics tab do all the work - and made only minor edits to the generated TOC. I also did the same for the Index of Keywords - let Robohelp do all the work clicking on the Index tab at the bottom of the Project pane to bring up RoboHelp's Indexing tool. Again, I deferred to the Smart Index Wizard button and let Robohelp do the bulk of the work. However, here as in the Glossary (next step) I found I had to do more of my own customization, edits nd even deletion of selected indexing and (later) Glossary terms.

I did not use RoboHelp's See Also and Related Item Wizards and button insertion tools because the first column of the header was already serving this function. But what becomes evident from this description is how much RoboHelp takes over much of the drudge work in creating the polished facilities of a HelpFile. Note - users must expect to have to do more or less of their own customizations and edits of the generated output - but RoboHelp certainly gets users ahead of the work curve.

Now I have not even mentioned the CSS, Skins, and Templates available for styling and formatting because I decided to stick with SQLite's own basic stylings. But I did want to use the new Conditional Build Tags. Basically I want the SQLite documentation to serve three class of developers:
1)Managers - with the smallest Help File that concentrates on the Architecture and basic capabilities;
2)End Users - that adds more SQL Syntax and user topics;
3)Developers - that get almost the complete file - excluding some of the simplified Managers & Endusers topics.

But to create the new Conditional Build Tags was not as easy as I expected. First I went to File | New ... but there was no New Conditional Build Tags menu item. So then I went to the Tools main menu - still no New Conditional Build Tags menu item there either. So then I used RoboHelp's docs and discovered if you right mouse clicked on the Conditional Build Tags folder, there was the New Conditional Build Tags menu item. Once I found the dialog, it was straight forward to create the Mgrs, Endusers, and JBStag (I am a developer) tags I wanted.

Once I had the Conditional Build tags, it was easy to apply them. Just use the right mouse button again. Highlight a topic in the Project or Topics pane, right mouse click and choose Apply Conditional Build Tag. Ditto for the a book of topic - rightmouse click and Apply Conditional Build Tag. Finally, to apply Conditional Build tags to text you want excluded, you just highlight/select the text and then right mouse click and Apply Conditional Build Tag. Simple and even better users get colored shading associated with each tag to indicate that text, topic or book is tagged. Very nice.

Then to build a Helpfile for Endusers just expand in the Projects Tree the Single Source layouts folder - choose the layout you want (WebHelp in my case) and right mouse click it to make it the Primary Layout. Then rightmouse click again on the Primary Layout (Webhelp in this case) and click the Properties and up will pop the following WebHelp layout properties dialog as shown in the screenshot on the left.

Here is where you want to set the Conditional Build Expression - I have typed in NOT Endusers because the Endusers tags - this means any book, topic, or text block that is tagged with Endusers will be excluded from the build. This is exactly what we want - we have tagged those items to be excluded from the Endusers Helpfile.

Voila we are done. So when I click on the Generate Primary Layout button (or select the File | Generate Primary Layout menu item, RoboHelp does just what I expect - and generates a helpfile without the C API and other topics that are of little or no interest to end users.

Now to generate the complete SQLite Helpfile (see it here on the Web), I have to remove the NOT Endusers Conditional Build Expression and just leave it blank - or change it to NOT Mgrs to generate a Helpfile for Managers which excludes topics and books of no interest to them.

Now the real payoff comes with expectations. I had allotted 3 or 4 days to get the SQLite Helpfile makeover done. It took me about 6-7 hours and I was doing a lot of experimenting prior to writing this review. I also was able to change the Skin of the Helpfile and added more Indexing items than expected. Finally the default Search capability of the generated RoboHelp Helpfiles are very fast and thorough. In short I was very pleased with the results -0 and am perfectly confident that I will be able to add the images, demos, and more elaborate examples for SQLite Select, sub query and other DML commands with time for doing it being the major obstacle.

Summary

So if the proof is in the putting out of a HelpFile - then Robohelp 6 acquitted itself very well. I used only a bit of the RoboScreenCapture (I have been spoiled by Techsmith's Snagit), hardly any of the RoboSource Control local version (why use it when I am the only documentor?) but full bore on the Conditional Build tags and some of the Adobe integrations. Tried a quick Captivate demo file - it worked splendidly - and so I promptly removed it because to do the right thing will take some time. I also tried converting to PDF, XML, and Java Helpfile with no snags whatsoever.

So despite my peeves about Missing Features- especially Dreamweaver integration, I would say that RoboHelp 6 certainly stands and delivers. MadCap Flare has some better GUI interface elements and a lower price by half but it just lacks input/ import options and cross platform output range (7 primary layouts in RoboHelp versus versus 4 for Flare). Other systems like Intuitions have comparable price and perhaps more sophisticated CSS styling, templates and build processes; but I found them much more difficult to master. Maybe that is because I am HTML and Web savvy; but so are millions of developers. For its range of imports, output layouts and general ease of use, RoboHelp 6 remains firmly my documentation system of choice.