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RoboHelp Article

 

Creating and Customizing Online Documentation with RoboHelp


Jen deHaan

Jen deHaan

Flash Authoring QE
Adobe
Jen deHaan's blog
flashthusiast.com
webvideoblogger.com

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Creating a New Project
  3. Importing and applying styles
  4. Adding media to pages
  5. Adding links to pages
  6. Adding headers and footers to your project
  7. Building a glossary
  8. Changing skins
  9. Incorporating into an existing web site
Created:
10 July 2004
User Level:
Intermediate, Advanced

The need for online user assistance is growing faster than ever. If you or your company sells products or online services, then chances are, you're already developing or thinking about creating online documentation.

Whether you've already created online documentation, want to update or improve documentation, or need to create a Help system from scratch, RoboHelp makes the authoring process fast and easy and the end user experience more intuitive and compelling.

See for yourself. In this article you will learn the basics of RoboHelp Office by creating a site called FlashFAQ. A fictitious website, FlashFAQ comprises documentation on how to get started with Macromedia Flash. Part of the project entails embedding SWF and video files within the pages to achieve a higher quality presentation.

To view the finished project and get a better idea of what you're about to create, visit FlashFAQ sample site. Notice how you can search pages, select items from a table of contents, and intuitively access all information. You'll be pleasantly surprised to see how fast and easy it is to produce a Help system like this using RoboHelp.

Before you start, note that there are two versions of RoboHelp: RoboHelp Office and RoboHelp Office Pro. This article covers RoboHelp Office, with which you can easily create professional Help systems and documentation. RoboHelp Office Pro has the same features as RoboHelp Office, plus functionality for tracking end-user feedback and natural language search capabilities.

With RoboHelp, you can create Help systems and documentation for desktop and Web-based applications and services. You can create and edit documentation using its built-in WYSIWYG editor, or any popular HTML editor such as Dreamweaver or Homesite.

If you already created content using Word, FrameMaker, PDF, HTML, or XML, you can import that content into RoboHelp and output your documentation to any popular online Help format. With RoboHelp, you can always update, edit and add to your documentation at any time.

Requirements

To complete this tutorial, install the following software and files:

RoboHelp Office X5

Tutorials and sample files:

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About the author

Jen deHaan was raised by wolves in the deep woods of the Canadian north. Canada's chief exports include motor vehicles (or their parts), lumber, newsprint, nonmetal materials, and wheat. One overcast day in 2004, Jen left her life as a Flash deseloper (designer/developer) in Canada to write Flash documentation and samples at Macromedia in San Francisco. Aside from her ongoing work at Adobe as an instructional designer for web and video products, Jen runs several community sites for fun, and maintains a blog at www.webvideoblogger.com and weblogs.macromedia.com/dehaan. She believes that _root tends to be evil and misses Tim Horton's coffee.