Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Technical Writing Techniques and Tools
Adobe FrameMaker and Microsoft Word are the most commonly used tools for tech writers. Here’s a run-down of what else is most used to write technical documents. Other tools that may be used for technical writing are Corel Draw, Flash, Dreamweaver, Epic Editor, and Frontpage.
Top Technical Writing Techniques and Tools:
Adobe FrameMaker
Perfect for so-called ‘long documents’. Adobe Framemaker is the tool you use to create manuals or ebooks. It is mostly used for large documents. Adobe FrameMaker is ideal for complex ‘books’ with graphs, tables, and diagrams. Unlike Word, it retains the settings and the master templates are a joy. The downside of FrameMaker is it’s harder to customize. Importing/exporting documents, even to PDF, can be problematic.
Top Technical Writing Techniques and Tools:
Adobe FrameMaker
Perfect for so-called ‘long documents’. Adobe Framemaker is the tool you use to create manuals or ebooks. It is mostly used for large documents. Adobe FrameMaker is ideal for complex ‘books’ with graphs, tables, and diagrams. Unlike Word, it retains the settings and the master templates are a joy. The downside of FrameMaker is it’s harder to customize. Importing/exporting documents, even to PDF, can be problematic.
Microsoft Word
90% of technical writing is in Microsoft Word. Like it or not, this is the most popular technical writing tool on the planet. Adobe FrameMaker might get the kudos but MS Word is what most all engineers, testers, and other contributors use to write their document.
Camtasia
Good for creating movies, tutorials and screen recordings. Techsmith products are a delight and this is no exception. You can make movies, for example, of an application, add sound, annotations and then export it to HTML or Flash. Arguably a great tool.
Snagit
There are other cheaper and free screenshots tools out there Snagit this is best for taking screen grabs/screenshots. The price is not that much considering how much you get back in return. Also, again, Techsmith is very helpful.It can take screenshots with one click (you can add it to the web browser) and then crop, edit and modify the image in the editor. Other features let you batch edit images, for example, add your website address or add a nice border to all images.
Adobe Photoshop
As always, doing the graphics is a nice counter-balance to writing activities. The documents that look nice graphically are more appreciated than plainer ‘image-free’ documents.
Visio
The only tool for process mapping and diagramming process flow is Visio. Smartdraw is better priced but its nice to be able to get large diagrams into Microsoft Word (edit, paste special) quickly without destroying the document in the process. Learning how to create process maps (correctly) is good learning experience. Not the most intuitive of apps but wonderful when you get into it. Visio is software which helps in the creation of diagrams and flowcharts.
Epic Editor
DITA and structured authoring tool, it can be very unforgiving (unlike Word for example) but once you get the hang of it, you’ll really see its strengths. Expensive but worth the investment if you need a heavy-weight tech authoring tool. Ideal for creating content ‘chunks’, DITA maps and task type information.
Notepad++
Wordpad is fine and so was UltraEdit until it became a commercial tool somewhere along the way (nagware ads) so we moved to NotePad++. It re-opens your last tabs (i.e. files) so you can hit the ground running. The Line Counter is also a nice touch.
RoboHelp
XML Spy
This tool has a nice UI that shows the tree structure of the tags and how they inter-relate. For someone with little XML experience, this is good to help get your teeth into the code, create the docs, and get out without mangling the application.
90% of technical writing is in Microsoft Word. Like it or not, this is the most popular technical writing tool on the planet. Adobe FrameMaker might get the kudos but MS Word is what most all engineers, testers, and other contributors use to write their document.
Camtasia
Good for creating movies, tutorials and screen recordings. Techsmith products are a delight and this is no exception. You can make movies, for example, of an application, add sound, annotations and then export it to HTML or Flash. Arguably a great tool.
Snagit
There are other cheaper and free screenshots tools out there Snagit this is best for taking screen grabs/screenshots. The price is not that much considering how much you get back in return. Also, again, Techsmith is very helpful.It can take screenshots with one click (you can add it to the web browser) and then crop, edit and modify the image in the editor. Other features let you batch edit images, for example, add your website address or add a nice border to all images.
Adobe Photoshop
As always, doing the graphics is a nice counter-balance to writing activities. The documents that look nice graphically are more appreciated than plainer ‘image-free’ documents.
Visio
The only tool for process mapping and diagramming process flow is Visio. Smartdraw is better priced but its nice to be able to get large diagrams into Microsoft Word (edit, paste special) quickly without destroying the document in the process. Learning how to create process maps (correctly) is good learning experience. Not the most intuitive of apps but wonderful when you get into it. Visio is software which helps in the creation of diagrams and flowcharts.
Epic Editor
DITA and structured authoring tool, it can be very unforgiving (unlike Word for example) but once you get the hang of it, you’ll really see its strengths. Expensive but worth the investment if you need a heavy-weight tech authoring tool. Ideal for creating content ‘chunks’, DITA maps and task type information.
Notepad++
Wordpad is fine and so was UltraEdit until it became a commercial tool somewhere along the way (nagware ads) so we moved to NotePad++. It re-opens your last tabs (i.e. files) so you can hit the ground running. The Line Counter is also a nice touch.
RoboHelp
RoboHelp is a help authoring tool which helps in creating Help files that you can find integrated with other software, for example, MS Word, Photoshop, Flash etc. You can create both HTML as well as a Flash Help with this software. You can also write tutorials with it and set the tutorial according to the proficiency level of the user. For creating help files and online documentation, it’s Doc-to-Help, which seems to have lost market share as RoboHelp has gone from strength to strength. Once Adobe bought it, it ploughed tons of resources into it, aligned it (somewhat) with Adobe FrameMaker and it’s now the defacto tool for HAT.
XML Spy
This tool has a nice UI that shows the tree structure of the tags and how they inter-relate. For someone with little XML experience, this is good to help get your teeth into the code, create the docs, and get out without mangling the application.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Don't forget: Content is vital on the Web, and there are lots of ways to go about it... http://ping.fm/SycmC
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