RoboHelp 2015 opinions?

[dmagnum74]

Hi,

Has anyone downloaded the trial version of RoboHelp 2015? The descriptions of the new features intrigue me, particularly new HTML5 layouts and enhanced search results.

I currently have RoboHelp 10 installed. I tweaked the mobile.css file to use colors that I want in the output files on iPhones and iPads, but the output still looks dated. I was wondering if the default multiscreen html5 layout in RoboHelp 2015 is a lot better or if I'd still need to make a lot of tweaks to the mobile.css files.

Are there any other new features in 2015 that have vastly improved your experience or output?

Thanks!

Donna

[Captiv8r]

Hi Donna

I'm sure thousands of folks have downloaded the trial of RoboHelp 2015. Probably just as many have actually upgraded.

Multiscreen still exists of course, but it's not really recommended. What IS recommended is the fairly new "Responsive" output. And there have been improvements to many things related to the Responsive HTML 5 output.

Some folks will love the new ribbon UI. Personally, I'm more of a "meh" the other UI worked better for me. But hey ho, it's just a new way of working with a product I know and love. I'll eventually adapt and it will eventually become second nature.

Admittedly questions like this baffle me. What prevents you from just downloading the eval and trying it out first hand?

Cheers... Rick

[dmagnum74]

Thanks, Rick. What is it about Multiscreen that you don't like? You said it isn't recommended. In RoboHelp 10, I can see that the default output needs tweaking. I guess it's the same case with 2015. I know that we all need to alter skins and output to suit our employers' logos and color schemes, but I was just hoping that the output was really fresh.

The other new features look good and I'll test it out.

Thanks.

Donna

[Captiv8r]

What is it about multiscreen? Hmmmm

It's horribly difficult to customize. The 2015 interface makes it MUCH simpler to customize a Responsive output by offering dialogs that allow you to easily configure colors and logos and suchlike.

.

Swarms of files. Say that your project has 2,000 HTML files. Further, say you have 6 different multiscreen layouts. In Responsive, you have a single set of output files to distribute. So perhaps a total of 2,300 files. Using the Multiscreen with 6 layouts, you multiply that by 6. So that 2,300 files now becomes 13,800 files!

Those are the two biggest complaints.

Another advantage of Responsive over Multiscreen is consistency across devices. If you are shooting for one theme, you have to modify many things in multiscreen with varying results. Responsive handles it more cleanly.

Cheers... Rick

[dmagnum74]

Thanks, Rick. Your response makes me look forward to testing Responsive HTML5.

[Laryssa_Skiles]

I am assuming that you made a copy of your original RH Project to upgrade in order to test upgrading. Have you verified that the copy of the project you're upgrading actually has the HTML topic files in it? I had this issue when I upgraded. I thought I had made a complete copy of my original project files but when I upgraded I had no topics. When I checked the folders of my copy, there were no HTML topic files. I had by mistake only copied the folder structure and all of the files in the root folder and not the contents of the folders. To fix, I made a complete copy, verified that the HTML topics were there and then that all of my topics were in the new project.

You may have already checked this. Just a thought.

Hope you get it figured out!

-Laryssa Skiles

Upgraded from RH11 to RoboHelp 2015