Copy link to clipboard
Copied
RH 2019 Review – Version 14.0.8
For anyone interested here's my review of RoboHelp (RH) 2019 Update 8.
Note that I posted this earlier in the week on the old forums but it didn't come over with the new forum changeover. So here it is again, with some minor updates.
And speaking of the old forum (sigh)... I don't like what I've seen so far in the editor to create new content for the forum. First off, I can't indent text! We all know white space is good for readability. Secondly, I can only use this ugly serif font, Times New Roman or whatever this is. Thirdly... okay, I'll shut up now. This isn't a review of the forums, but perhaps I'll do that one in a later post.)
About this Review
I did this review to determine if RH 2019 offered significant reasons for me to upgrade my software and my projects. I'm currently using RH 2017. I downloaded the trial version (14.0.8) about a month ago and started comparing it against the latest RH 2017, listing the things I liked etc. Below are my pros / cons etc. and my recommendation on whether to upgrade at the end.
I'm also basing my review and user experience around converting our legacy projects. This obviously needs to work for us. These are old projects that at one time were in Word (old Doc-to-Help) then were imported into and have been in RH for 15 years and have been heavily modified by us with JavaScript files and custom CSS modifications.
Note that RH 2019 comes in two modes. Classic and new (or "re-imagined"). The new mode is the default, but you can launch an older project in classic mode. In fact, running an .xpj launches RH 2019 in classic mode until you tell it to upgrade to the new mode. Classic mode behaves the same as RH 2017 did, same UI and same functionality with possibly some bug fixes.
Most of my comments below are from comparing RH 2017 against the new mode. Where I discuss the classic mode, I use "classic" in parentheses to indicate that.
Pros
Cons
<script lang="javascript">
alert("test");
</script>
You can insert code via the html code editor, but neither the editor nor the Ctrl + W preview shows the alert. It worked fine in RH 2017, and I used the preview topic feature a lot to quickly test if JavaScript was working in my project or topic. Now, you only see the JavaScript if you generate the output.
Buggy Things
Issues to Fix After Upgrading a RH 2017 Project to 2019
Items I Couldn't Research
I wanted to research these with my converted files but wasn't ever able to due to bugs:
What does our printable output look like in the pdf? Can we get by without post processing in word?
How does a merged HTML5 help system compare with RH 2017's? Is the Speed of search results in merged HTML5 help improved? Speed of opening a large merged HTML5 help output?
Questions and Concerns
Should You Upgrade? Final Observations
The re-imagined RH 2019 may be a good fit if you're creating new projects or if your legacy projects are not heavily modified with .CSS and JavaScript implementations like my projects are. I did expect that things would convert cleanly, that if something worked just fine in RH 2017, it'd surely work in 2019, despite the number and types of modifications made. I suppose I naively expected too much.
Anyway, for us, to upgrade to the new "Re-Imagined" RoboHelp 2019 would require me to manually adjust or fix a multitude of things that currently work just fine in RH 2017. The gains at the moment do not outweigh the amount work I'd have to do just to get my outputs behaving like they already do in RH 2017.
Your experience may not not be the same as mine, but I suspect that other Help projects that have been around a while or that are heavy on customizations (custom style sheets, custom java scripts, custom output destinations, and so on) may not convert cleanly and you'll be left with a lot of manual fixing to do. Get the trial and test it out. I'd be interested if that has been your experience and what Adobe's response has been.
Something else to keep in mind is that all indications point to the fact that the "Re-Imagined" RH (non-classic) is what will get Adobe's attention, time, money, and development energy going forward. The classic mode will likely "die the vine" so to speak, and I doubt it'll be enhanced in coming years. I'm not sure where that leaves those of us who have been long-standing RH customers but who can't afford the overhead needed to manually fix up all the issues of upgrading to the new RH.
Hope something here helps someone else. Good luck with your own endeavors with RH 2019!
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
RH 2019 Review – Version 14.0.8
For anyone interested here's my review of RoboHelp (RH) 2019 Update 8.
Note that I posted this earlier in the week on the old forums but it didn't come over with the new forum changeover. So here it is again, with some minor updates.
And speaking of the old forum (sigh)... I don't like what I've seen so far in the editor to create new content for the forum. First off, I can't indent text! We all know white space is good for readability. Secondly, I can only use this ugly serif font, Times New Roman or whatever this is. Thirdly... okay, I'll shut up now. This isn't a review of the forums, but perhaps I'll do that one in a later post.)
About this Review
I did this review to determine if RH 2019 offered significant reasons for me to upgrade my software and my projects. I'm currently using RH 2017. I downloaded the trial version (14.0.8) about a month ago and started comparing it against the latest RH 2017, listing the things I liked etc. Below are my pros / cons etc. and my recommendation on whether to upgrade at the end.
I'm also basing my review and user experience around converting our legacy projects. This obviously needs to work for us. These are old projects that at one time were in Word (old Doc-to-Help) then were imported into and have been in RH for 15 years and have been heavily modified by us with JavaScript files and custom CSS modifications.
Note that RH 2019 comes in two modes. Classic and new (or "re-imagined"). The new mode is the default, but you can launch an older project in classic mode. In fact, running an .xpj launches RH 2019 in classic mode until you tell it to upgrade to the new mode. Classic mode behaves the same as RH 2017 did, same UI and same functionality with possibly some bug fixes.
Most of my comments below are from comparing RH 2017 against the new mode. Where I discuss the classic mode, I use "classic" in parentheses to indicate that.
Pros
Cons
<script lang="javascript">
alert("test");
</script>
You can insert code via the html code editor, but neither the editor nor the Ctrl + W preview shows the alert. It worked fine in RH 2017, and I used the preview topic feature a lot to quickly test if JavaScript was working in my project or topic. Now, you only see the JavaScript if you generate the output.
Buggy Things
Issues to Fix After Upgrading a RH 2017 Project to 2019
Items I Couldn't Research
I wanted to research these with my converted files but wasn't ever able to due to bugs:
What does our printable output look like in the pdf? Can we get by without post processing in word?
How does a merged HTML5 help system compare with RH 2017's? Is the Speed of search results in merged HTML5 help improved? Speed of opening a large merged HTML5 help output?
Questions and Concerns
Should You Upgrade? Final Observations
The re-imagined RH 2019 may be a good fit if you're creating new projects or if your legacy projects are not heavily modified with .CSS and JavaScript implementations like my projects are. I did expect that things would convert cleanly, that if something worked just fine in RH 2017, it'd surely work in 2019, despite the number and types of modifications made. I suppose I naively expected too much.
Anyway, for us, to upgrade to the new "Re-Imagined" RoboHelp 2019 would require me to manually adjust or fix a multitude of things that currently work just fine in RH 2017. The gains at the moment do not outweigh the amount work I'd have to do just to get my outputs behaving like they already do in RH 2017.
Your experience may not not be the same as mine, but I suspect that other Help projects that have been around a while or that are heavy on customizations (custom style sheets, custom java scripts, custom output destinations, and so on) may not convert cleanly and you'll be left with a lot of manual fixing to do. Get the trial and test it out. I'd be interested if that has been your experience and what Adobe's response has been.
Something else to keep in mind is that all indications point to the fact that the "Re-Imagined" RH (non-classic) is what will get Adobe's attention, time, money, and development energy going forward. The classic mode will likely "die the vine" so to speak, and I doubt it'll be enhanced in coming years. I'm not sure where that leaves those of us who have been long-standing RH customers but who can't afford the overhead needed to manually fix up all the issues of upgrading to the new RH.
Hope something here helps someone else. Good luck with your own endeavors with RH 2019!
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
Thanks Jared.
What you said here really sums it up for me.
The gains at the moment do not outweigh the amount work I'd have to do just to get my outputs behaving like they already do in RH 2017.
The product feels rushed. Not having the export to Word, for example. Converting projects isn't work the hassle. So much stuff needsd to be fixed.
For now, I'm going back to the old version of RH.
Finally, having two names for the same product reflects this confused delivery.
Ivan
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
Thanks for taking the time to write up this detailed review, Jared. We're also debating about converting our projects to the "re-imagined" rh2019. Many of our projects are large legacy projects that have been through many RH releases. One of the pros of the new release is the Collaboration feature, which works great, but it seems that usabilitywise, this release has taken a few steps back - for many of the reasons you've mentioned. I can't use CTRL+W to preview a selected topic. Now I have to open the topic in the editor for that shortcut to work. Also, it seems I can't use CTRL+P to print a topic in the editor or in preview mode. Since, I can't view the editor and the TOC windows side-by-side anymore, I can't create links by dragging & dropping a page in the TOC onto selected text. Also, several files I guess Adobe considered uncessesary to the project were deleted during the conversion process. For example, the Word templates we use for generating Word documents.
I am concerned about the conversion process moving our CSS file into the Assets folder, I need to see how that impacts the generated topics. I could go on. But I won't.
I will check out some of the other issues (i.e., cons) you pointed out. They'll give us more food for thought as we make a decision on converting the rest of our projects. By the way, I just installed the 2019.0.9 patch and we have the output option to generate Word docs.
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
I'm glad they put Word back in and searching across the project. Finally...
I was told Word still had some issues that some things didn't generate right so hopefully it turns out well for you.
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
Hi Jared,
Thanks for looking at RoboHelp 2019 and sharing your detailed review. Let me respond to the same from Adobe's side.
Classic project migration:
From the beginning this has been one of our top priority focus area. We know that if existing projects don't migrate well people will be very reluctant to upgrade. Tricky part is, which you have also covered, over the years projects have evolved in their own unique ways and it is challenging to take care of all the scenarios in an exhausting way. For this we need support from the users to share their issues with us. We have worked with every user who have reached out to us and helped with the project upgrade.
Many things in 2019 work differently, we are strictly adhering to the HTML5 and CSS3 standards and that makes some things incompatible during upgrade especially styling. Classic has many non-css way for styling, e.g. space characters for padding. This creates conflict and may require users to manually fix some parts of it. Output are all based on HTML5 now so classic WebHelp won't work as it is. These are some of the areas which may require extra work after the migration but our attempt has been to minimize the extra effort as much as possible.
Update 9:
It went live on Sep 11 and has two major gaps covered which you have also pointed out, Word output and Find/Replace across project. Apart from these there are a bunch of enhancements and fixes.
https://helpx.adobe.com/robohelp/kb/fixed-issues.html
Clarifications:
Feedback taken for the following, we will try to take care of ASAP:
Need cooperation on the following because they are project/scenario specific
2019 release provides us modern platform to innovate and respond to user's need faster. Without getting into the debate of timing of 2019 release, I will suggest let's look forward. From Adobe's side we are fully committed to take our users along and provide a happy experience. You will continue to see the evolution at a rapid pace and we look forward to your support in that journey.
Thanks,
Vivek
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
There are four sections: 1. Thing you want to see (TOC, Contents ...) 2. The thing you selected in 1. 3. The main window. 4. Properties etc. So, select TOC in 1. --> The list of all your TOCs is displayed in 2. Select desired TOC in 2 and double click. --> TOC opens in 3. Now Select contents in 1 --> Contents open in 2.
I am using update 9, but it also worked before.
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
I must say this pretty much echoes my experience when testing the upgrade. I'd consider trying 2019 in the event I get a new job or have to start a brand new project. But the aggro involved in problem solving,fixing and testing every single topic, graphic and feature until the 2019 help works like it did straight out of the box with 2017, is just too much to take on.
Im sure 2019 offers a lot of benefits to a new user compared to the old version, when starting from scratch. And I look forward to using it in future.
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
Jared makes some valid points that Adobe have responded to. It's important to keep in mind that some of his projects are complex and Adobe have offered to assist. I have referrred issues seen here to them and they have worked on them.
There are some feature issues that can make an upgrade difficult but I don't think I have seen anyone have to "fix every single topic, graphic and feature."
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
My experience has been similar to johnvarvatsis. I've had to do a huge amount of fixing to get things to work.
Adobe has offered to help but couldn't fix the issues, esp CSS.
I've used Adobe products for 20+ years but this feels like it has not been tested properly at all. It feels rushed.
Re: I don't think I have seen anyone have to "fix every single topic, graphic and feature." I had to go thru each page and fix html issues. The import is very brittle.
Hopefully the next release - please give it a proper name! - will be more robust... otherwise we'll have to seriously consider Madcap.
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
Sorry Peter, I was probably being a bit melodramatic there. I should have said "review and possibly tweak" every topic graphic and feature. " I'm a happy 2017 user who won't move to 2019 until I can make a fresh start with a new project.