Useful Tools and Links

Site / Tool

Content

A great source of help for technical authors. Lots of examples, tips and a guide to useful software.

You can also see how users can add their own annotations to webhelp. Click on the C-note link.

The downloads include Batch File Renamer. This is the best utility I have found with options to:

• Add prefixes and suffixes
• Change the case
• Fill blanks with underscores
• etc.

You can also get it from Freeware Files, see below.

An excellent find and replace tool with many other useful authoring tools built in.

It's also an excellent launch pad to a whole host of useful stuff.

The free version of Vice Versa's excellent tool to compare the contents of a folder and report the differences. Can be set to compare just the file size and date for speed. The CRC method also checks content. Use the "both" for a complete check.

If you have two copies of a project and are not sure what the differences are, or even if there are any differences, this will resolve the problem.

HTML Entity Lookup

Firefox Addin

Two links here.

The first takes you to a webpage where you can enter something like "arrow" in a field and the page will show you all the arrow symbols that can be created using entities, there are more than shown here. You can click the clipboard symbol to add the html code to your clipboard. Great for finding the more obscure entities without scrolling through a list of all of them.

The second link takes you to a Firefox add in that is based on the same code.

Click the install icon and download the XPI file to your PC. Go to the XPI file in Windows Explorer and drag it to a Firefox window and release it to install.

Ignore the Dashboard Widget you see unless you are running an Apple Mac.

RoboScreenCapture is my favourite tool for capturing windows, regions, buttons and so on. It was produced under licence from Hyperionics but it was discontinued in December 2004.

Hyperionics own tool has some extra features so you might want to try it as an alternative.

Write macros that work with any application.

• Link it to RoboHelp so that you can have shortcuts to change styles in the same way as in Word.
• Hold text that you repeat throughout your help so that you always get it word perfect.
• Insert tables with all the formatting you like.

It's low cost and you will wonder how you survived without it.

Feature request / Bug report

If you are looking for online training, Rick Stone (RoboWizard) is one of the world's most experienced RoboHelp users and he provides training through one of his sites.

www.showmesolutions.com

Try Microsoft's Visual Web Developer if you need a free HTML editor. Naturally there are some Microsoft centric features but it is a good editor and, like I said, it's free.

Maybe you don't like the new Ribbon and the Tabs being locked down so that you cannot get the layout you want.

Click the link and take a look at Paul Schmid's blog where he argues for a half-way house. The Ribbon plus your own tab that you can customise.

If you like what you see, there's a free version and a "let's get serious" version at a very reasonable price.

I have read good things about it and intend to give it a try soon. I have too many macros to which I need better access than Microsoft provide.

An excellent freeware link checker. If you have merged webhelp, RoboHelp does not report broken links across projects so you need a utility to do this. Dreamweaver and FrontPage have such functions but see how quick this one is.

Thanks to Roger Nilsson of Copperfield Publishing for this link.