Flare Features
True XML-Based Single-Source Content Authoring for Multi-Channel Publishing
MadCap Flare™ is packed with features and has been designed to give technical writers, content authors and documentation specialists a versatile XML-based authoring and publishing solution. Flare’s intuitive user interface allows users to easily create and manage content, import legacy authoring projects, and publish to a wide variety of sources, all from a single source document. MadCap Software is passionate about its users, and strives to provide all of the features you have come to expect in a high-end, authoring and publishing system, including:
Topic-based Content Development
- Author in structured topic-based content development for powerful, sophisticated information delivery
Maximum Content Reuse
- Easily create, manage and reuse content with conditional text, variables, snippets, outlines, and more
XML Flexibility And CSS Design
- Enjoy flexibility with XML (extensible markup language) and control the look and style of your content with CSS
(cascading style sheets)
Global Project Linking
- Share and update common elements across multiple projects
Product Integration
- MadCap Flare allows for seamless integration across MadCap Software’s entire line of software applications.
- MadCap Feedback Server provides user feedback and reporting
- MadCap Analyzer scans and analyzes your project for suggestions to improve your project efficiency and consistency
- MadCap Mimic, Capture, and Echo provide powerful multimedia publishing integration for your projects
- MadCap Lingo enables translation and localization
- Contribute content using MadCap X-Edit Contribute and/or insert comments using MadCap X-Edit Review
Import Existing Content
- Adobe® FrameMaker® (.fm, .mif, .book)
- Microsoft® Word™
- HTML/XHTML
- RoboHelp® projects
- HTML Help projects
- DITA
Generate Multiple Outputs
- Cross-browser, cross-platform Help (WebHelp or WebHelp Plus)
- Microsoft® HTML Help (.chm)
- Help for .NET applications or Windows® Vista (DotNet Help)
- Adobe® FrameMaker® (.fm, .mif, .book)
- Direct PDF (no need for Adobe® Distiller or Word™ 2007)
- Microsoft® Word™ (.xml, .doc)
- Direct XPS and DOCX
- WebHelp AIR (Direct Adobe® AIR integration)
- Pure XHTML
- DITA
- Mobile (iPhone, Microsoft Mobile, Palm Web OS, BlackBerry and Android)
Print-Based Output Features
- Choose between Print and Web layout views
- Page layouts
- Context-sensitive cross-references
- Footnotes
- Topic preview for print-based output types
- Generate headings in output based on TOC structure
- Heading variables (easily insert heading variables, glossary terms, and index terms)
- Hyphenation control
- Mini-TOC for a single chapter or section
- Short line elimination
- Widow and orphan control
- Zoom/scale pages
- Page breaks on table rows
- Image resizing with aspect ratio maintained
Power and Flexibility
- Advanced reporting with Analyzer (over 20 projectspecific reports)
- ASPX, HTML, and other custom file extensions for WebHelp output
- Enhanced Indexing (including index links and auto-indexes, which let you automatically add words and phrases in your project to a generated index)
- Image file format support including .xps, .xaml, .wmf, and .emf
- Context-sensitive Help testing (now available for DotNet Help)
- Wildcard search support for DotNet Help
Team Collaboration
- Incorporate document contributions from others
- Send topics out for review and accept or reject changes
- Incorporate/transfer review comments (annotations) into topics
- Contribution templates (contributors use elements and formatting you want)
- Locks (choose areas of content that reviewers can and cannot edit)
Multi-Language Support
- Fully Unicode enabled
- Double-byte and Asian language support
- Language support for Eastern European languages
- Seamless integration with MadCap Lingo for easy localization
Single-Sourcing Features
- Generate multiple targets from one project
- Variables and Snippets (re-usable text and content)
- Single-sourcing of images
- Conditional text (at all levels)
- Style sheets for topics and tables
- Easily synchronize with Word™ or FrameMaker® documents
- Global Project Linking — share and update common elements across multiple projects
- Master style sheets
- Master TOC at project level
Ease of Use
- Auto-numbering
- Visual document structure display
- View and edit multiple docs simultaneously
- Command line compiling
- Drag-and-drop table columns and rows
- View, filter, and access all files from a single list
- Disable styles that you do not use
- IntelliSense for matching text, frequent phrases, and variables
- Zip and email projects
- Project toolbar for easy access to common tasks
- Style pick window (quick way to apply styles)
- Open files by dragging from Windows to Flare
- Insert snippets by dragging from Content Explorer
Server
- Integration with industry source control systems that use the MS SCC API interface
- Faster server-side search
- Searching of non-XHTML content (Word™ documents, PDF files, etc.)
- Automatic runtime merging of projects without any in-project work
“I have been a Technical Writer for over 20 years now, and Flare is the best Help
Authoring Tool that I have used.”
- Greg Birkenbeuel
TENG
“I'm really excited about the new Flare 6.0 release…The mobile target
is styled like an iPhone app, and is a great way for me to deliver content to our customers who
are on the go, but who need access to our Help content”
- Paul Pehrson
Doc Guy Training
“MadCap Flare is giving us state-of-the-art
capabilities while offering the lowest cost of
ownership of any authoring software we've seen
on the market”
- Harold Gross
Microsoft Health Solutions Group
“Thank God for the developers at MadCap for
providing the most agile XML-based authoring tool on the planet.”
- Jim Corbin
BIO-key
