Rapid development of help files and user documentation in Dr.Explain 5
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Rapid development of help files & user documentation in Dr.Explain 5.0
Dennis CraneIndigo Byte Systems, LLC
October 31, 2014
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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
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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 get acquainted
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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
Let's get acquainted
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Quick Start
Easy installation. UI in 10 languages!
Get ready!
Dreams come true
Get set! Go!www.drexplain.com
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Forget about boring work. Automate it!
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
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Forget about boring work. Automate it!
Text variables
Dreams come true
Quick insertion of duplicating text fragments
Bulk replacement of all matches
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Forget about boring work. Automate it!
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
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Forget about boring work. Automate it!
Section statuses and progress indicators in a project
Dreams come true
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Forget about boring work. Automate it!
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
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Forget about boring work. Automate it!
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
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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
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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
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Cannot into programming? Forget!
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
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Cannot into programming? Forget!
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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Current user of Dr.Explain v.1 – v.4?
Need for Dr.Explain 5?
Check your upgrade options at http://www.drexplain.com/v5updates/
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Any questions? Feel free to e-mail me:
Install, run and have a good time!
www.drexplain.com
Dennis [email protected]