UK MadCap user group launches with two events

MadSIG, the MadCap UK & Europe user group, launches with two events in the UK in September. We are a handful of MadCap users who network to share expertise and support. Most of us are based in the UK, though I’m the Europe outlier who’s based in Germany (and sometimes Denmark).

MadSIG offers occasional meet-ups and also a LinkedIn group for feedback, ideas and resources. If you are a sole technical author, become part of a more personal group – in your own virtual home town rather than in the big city of the online forums!

MadSIG is a special interest group under the ISTC‘s umbrella – while you don’t need to be an ISTC member to join and participate, it’s certainly a good idea to take advantage of the society’s many benefits.

Meet with MadCap’s Mike Hamilton in Staines on 19 Sep

Mike Hamilton from MadCap is going to be at the Swan Hotel and Pub, The Hythe, Staines TW18 3JB, on Thursday 19th September from 7pm onwards. He’s generously offered to spend the evening talking MadCap with anyone who uses Flare and the other MadCap products, or is interested in finding out more about them.

If you would like to come, please let us know by email to MadSIG@ISTC.org.uk with your contact details, so we can update you if anything changes last minute. If you’ve got any specific topics you’d like to talk about, feel free to let us know, too.

Mike Hamilton has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the MadCap products, so bring your questions and, if you like, your projects, and get to know some other Flare fanatics from the South of England at the same time.

Inaugural MadSIG meeting at TCUK on 25 Sep

MadSIG holds its inaugural meeting at TCUK 2013. If you’re at TCUK anyway, this is your easiest chance to meet other MadCap users. We’ll meet at the Terrace Bar of the Marriott conference hotel on Wednesday, 25 Sep at 5 pm.

This meeting is a TCUK fringe event – that is, it is organised by us delegates, not by the conference itself. We are grateful that TCUK provides space and publicity.

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Cheat sheets for Flare keyboard shortcuts

Harness MadCap Flare’s mighty, but daunting user interface with one of three cheat sheets of keyboard shortcuts for MadCap Flare.

We are starting to use Flare to get serious about single-sourcing and re-using our topics. I’ve been using Flare before, but I still don’t always know where to find a certain function or how to quickly open one of its many window panes. This is where keyboard shortcuts come in handy. Of course, I’m not the first user to find them helpful, so you can choose from three different cheat sheets:

The official full monty

The official shortcut reference in PDF by MadCap contains two lists of shortcuts, one sorted by tasks, the other sorted by shortcuts. The annotated tables fill a total of 14 pages. That’s good for an exhaustive reference, but less useful for a cheat sheet to keep next to the keyboard.

The quickie

This 1-page quick reference in PDF is by Scott DeLoach, a MadCap Certified Instructor for Flare who has written the MadCap Flare Certified Test Review + Developer’s Guide, MadCap Software’s Flare Training Guide, and other Flare Guides.

The new homegrown

This is my own new 2-page quick reference in PDF, mashed up from the two previous sources:

Click to download the 2-page cheat sheet in PDF.

It’s 1 page with all shortcuts listed by Flare element and 1 page with all shortcuts listed by action. If you’re using Flare, I hope you find it helpful.

MadCap roadshow in Long Beach

MadCap kicked of the 2011 season of roadshows on March 13 in Long Beach, CA, to coincide with the workshop day of the WritersUA conference.

A full-day program offered primers on topic-based authoring and single sourcing, best (and less recommended) practices of collaborative authoring, and a passionate introduction to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Shorter breakout sessions (which don’t seem to be part of the other roadshow dates) presented tips and tricks for Flare: How to handle tables, create print output and localize, as well as a case study about moving from RoboHelp to Flare.

Mike Hamilton reminds us to think topics!

More like a conference

Several aspects made the event feel more like a Flare-centric conference than the marketing or sales event it was as well:

• Presentations address tech writing challenges in general, whether or not you use Flare:
  • How to optimize topics for reuse
  • How to efficiently publish to several media from one source
  • How to collaborate with other authors.
  • And, oh yes, how you can do these things with Flare. But the general emphasis was on: “Here’s how you can work efficiently.” In fact, the helpful introduction to CSS didn’t rely on Flare at all. The more sales-y “Wanna see what the new version can do?” came only in a longish rock video with MC Mike during the drinks reception.

• Networking opportunities galore during breakfast, lunch, the concluding reception and to some extent even during the breakout sessions.
• A day’s worth of Q&A. MadCap brought more than a dozen people from all teams to be able to answer any question that we present and future users might throw at them. Their answers were usually constructive and frank, though my question about the number of employees got the PR-tinted answer “fewer than 100”. When asked whether Flare can do X, Mike sometimes says: “Not at the moment.” Previously, I thought this was just supposed to sound better than “No.” But after following Flare’s development for a few versions, I now see that many of such features have been added, such as the long-awaited formula capabilities in version 7.

Taking tech comm seriously

In a nutshell, MadCap continues to take tech writers, their requests and issues seriously. Here are some examples of insights from the sessions to illustrate how they go beyond the bells and whistles of selling a new version:

• Customer focus is important – but documentation must also recognize and satisfy the owner (usually, the company that pays for the documentation) and the manager (who needs to ensure that documentation is completed in time and in budget).
• Create separate target definitions for separate deliverables. Don’t rely on manual steps in the production process which might get lost in the hustle and bustle. For example, don’t trust that you’ll remember to update the global variable with the correct company name…
• When you share source files over a network, even in a small team, use either a dedicated source control system or SharePoint (which includes source control) which avoids two people editing the same file at once and allows to lock down central resources like stylesheets.
• There is no one font size that’s always appropriate. How large a font appears depends a lot on the “x-height” (roughly the height of the letter x), and that can vary in fonts of the same size.

Wish list

Taking my cue from other conferences I’ve attended, I think MadCap could add two things to improve the roadshow:

• Book table. There are a few books available about MadCap products. For those of us who like books with their tools, why not have at least a sample copy by the registration table, so we can check them out whether we want to buy them or not?
• Rant & rave session. This one might not be in MadCap’s best interest, but hey, they’re generally a pretty accessible company who like to collaborate with their customers and prospects. I think they should put on a session where attendees can get one minute each to rant and/or rave about the products. Such a forum would give MadCap a quick way to see what bothers a lot of users – and what they like. Two peeves came up:
  • The previously free reviewer module “X-Edit” has been replaced by “Contributor” which requires a license per user. This is not feasible in environments where each writer easily has one or two dozen potential reviewers. MadCap needs to come up with a better licensing model for this.
  • Flare lets you define separate CSS Mediums for print and online in great detail. A field near the top indicates which one you’re editing. Yet a lot of users still manage to edit the “wrong” one when they get all engrossed in styles. Simply highlighting this better would improve usability for focused, single-minded users.

If you’ve attended a MadCap roadshow or other such industry event or are considering to attend, feel free to share impressions or questions in the comments.