Rapid development of help files and user documentation in Dr.Explain 5

Rapid development of help files & user documentation in Dr.Explain 5.0

Dennis CraneIndigo Byte Systems, LLC

October 31, 2014

Who we are and what's happening?

We've been developing various software to support IT products since 2004

We help technical writers, engineers, software developers, trainers, and IT support teams

We hate boring work, cognitive dissonances, rich user interfaces, and other disgusting things

We use automation, minimalism, templates, common sense, and strange humor

Our tool is: Dr.Explain

Let's get acquainted

My Precious

Dr.Explain is a software for rapid development of user documentation

Thousands of users across the globe • create help files for software and technical systems• create online help systems• create printed manuals and guides

Features• Automatic annotations for the user interfaces• Total minimalism (no excessive clicks)• All inclusive


Let’s dream

Suppose you need to quickly develop user documentation in various formats for your software product

What you likely want• Quick start

• Less tedious work and more automation

• Generate multiple formats from a single project

• No extra programming

• Fast updates and efficient reuse

• Better teamwork


Quick Start

Easy installation. UI in 10 languages!

Get ready!

Dreams come true

Get set! Go!www.drexplain.com

http://www.drexplain.com/

Quick Start

Sample project

Dreams come true

• Available in the start dialog at launch

• This is a user documentation for a real software called TBS Cover Editor

• You can preview the output literally in two clicks

• Contains items of various types

• Allows you to quickly see how changes in the settings influence the output

Quick start

Total minimalism (no excessive clicks)

Dreams come true

• The most important functions are always at hand

• Flexible settings under the hood

• Minimum number of clicks and mouse wheel runs

• 1-click preview even for PDFs!

• Hotkeys for frequently used commands

Quick start

Import your legacy documentation in various formats

Dreams come true

What you can import:

• Legacy help files

• MS Word and RTF documents

• Individual text files

• File catalogs

• Supports all charsets

• Automatically generates a table of contents in a project

• Reproduces formatting of imported documents as exact as possible

Quick start

Very liberal free version

Dreams come true

• Watermarks on all images

• No time limits or reduced functionality

• No project size limits

• Free end-to-end preparation of the ready-to-use documentation

• No need to rework projects after registration

Forget about boring work. Automate it!

New project template

Dreams come true

Pre-configured and ready-to-use

• Cover

• Dynamic table of contents

• First section

• Optimized language settings

• Automatic names for files

• Optimized project export settings


Automated documenting of the user interfaces

Dreams come true

Recognizes and annotates:• Software dialogs• Menus and submenus• Web pages• Java UI applications (SWING)• Flash applications (SWF)

The software makes a screenshot, analyzes the structure of the window and then automatically generates an image containing notes and explanatory tags


Text variables

Dreams come true

Quick insertion of duplicating text fragments

Bulk replacement of all matches


HTML and special objects in the editor

Dreams come true

Use the HTML object to:

• Add a dynamic or a JavaScript content into your online manuals

• Embed a complex item into a text of a section

• Insert custom tags

• Fine-tune various items and their behavior


Section statuses and progress indicators in a project

Dreams come true


Automatic publishing of online manuals once they're exported

Dreams come true

Publish on any website through FTP

Publish on the cloud platform Tiwri.com


And…

Dreams come true

Automatic indexing for quick search

Command line mode for automatic releases and bulk processing

Checking projects for integrity, consistency, completeness and errors

Allocation of Help IDs for creating context-sensitive help files

…and much more

Multiple formats, single solution…

From tiny help files to large printed user manuals

Dreams come true

What you can create from a single project:

• Online manuals with integrated searchbox and custom layout

• Software help files

• Large printed manuals in PDF or RTF with a cover, table of contents and full support of national encodings

Cannot into programming? Forget!

Full-text search in online manuals

Dreams come true

• Automatic indexing for quick search

• Highlighting of results

• No database required

• No custom scripts required

• Works even on a free-of-charge hosting


Integrate your documentation into your corporate website

Dreams come true

• Full integration of documentation into websites

• Custom page layouts

• Built-in WYSIWYG editor for headers, footers and side panels

• Custom sections in HTML documents

• Insertion of arbitrary program code in headers, footers and side panels


Customize the visual appearance

Dreams come true

• Adjust your documentation to a corporate style

• Choose from the standard set of color schemes

• Customize a color scheme in the built-in WYSIWYG editor

• Fine-tuning with CSS

Reuse and updates

Quick replacement of screenshots

Dreams come true

Replace screenshots in the annotated images without losing any notes

Rapid documentation updates for each new release of your software product

Reuse and updates

Copy and move sections as you want

Dreams come true

You can cut an entire subtree in the hierarchy and insert it into another document

• Makes it easier to reuse the existing content

• Allows you to work separately with various parts of your documentation and then seamlessly merge them into a final document

Teamwork & Collaboration

Tiwri.com is a cloud platform that lets multiple users jointly develop technical, reference, or user documentation using Dr.Explain 5 as an editor application.

Dreams come true

Looking into the future

Roadmap…

And the last one…

Enhance collaboration and teamwork on tiwri.com

Improve the editor

Automate even more things

Create a thin web-based editor

Add support of multiple languages within a single project

http://www.tiwri.com/

Current user of Dr.Explain v.1 – v.4?

Need for Dr.Explain 5?

Check your upgrade options at http://www.drexplain.com/v5updates/

http://www.drexplain.com/v5updates/

Any questions? Feel free to e-mail me:

Install, run and have a good time!

www.drexplain.com

Dennis [email protected]

http://www.drexplain.com/

mailto:[email protected]

Rapid development of help files and user documentation in Dr.Explain 5

Software

Transcript of Rapid development of help files and user documentation in Dr.Explain 5