Discover Why Industry Experts Are Gravitating Towards MadCap Software Over the Adobe Technical Communications Suite

MadCap Flare: ~727 MB, no download required for MadCap Central

MadCap Software: Flare and Central support both 64-bit and 32-bit versions of Windows 7, 8, and 10. You can also run MadCap Flare on a Mac with My Virtual Windows Machine

MadCap Software:MadCap Software releases major new updates for MadCap Flare multiple times a year. Agile development allows for more releases, updates and bug fixes on a more frequent basis.

MadCap Flare: Offers full integration with MadCap Mimic.

MadCap Flare: Robust project analysis integrated directly within the software.

MadCap Flare: Direct support for translation through XML-based project files and MadCap Lingo.

MadCap Flare: Offers a plug-in API.

MadCap Flare: Multiple specialized templates available.

MadCap Software: Flare was built with single-sourcing and topic-based authoring as the focus, with an entire feature-set revolving around single-sourcing and content reuse in one tool:

• Unlimited TOCs
• Unlimited targets
• Snippets
• Conditions
• Variables
• Snippet conditions/variables
• Micro Content
• Micro Content conditions/variables
• Tags
• Glossary sets
• And much more

MadCap Flare: Comprehensive internal help system.

MadCap Flare: Supported via HyperSTE and Acrolinx.

MadCap Software: Flare not only offers a large number of free 'static' reports for users, but it also provides a set of 'dynamic' reports. The errors or warnings in these reports can be double-clicked to open the topic with the error or warning message selected. Some of these reports in Flare include:

• Broken hyperlinks
• Topics not in index
• Topics not in TOC
• Unused files
• And many more

MadCap Flare: Inbuilt reporting for word count.

MadCap Software: Flare supports responsive and intuitive authoring, allowing content to adjust based on device or screen size.

MadCap Software: Author content in the Topic Editor more efficiently by only seeing the content that you need. Flare offers the ability to Hide/Show content in the topic editor based on conditional expressions.

MadCap Software: Flare offers a text analysis tool to help enhance content consistency. Central now offers AI Assist, a ChatGPT plugin that can be used not only to generate content but also to analyze existing content and propose improvements.

MadCap Software: Flare makes it easy to create and edit lists and include options to work with paragraphs or simple lists, merge all selected lists and sort lists while editing or at build time.

MadCap Software: Flare allows previewing of different screen sizes within the authoring environment.

MadCap Software: The preview for topics, snippets and template pages now displays in a dynamic window pane. This allows you to keep the preview open while you work and see changes as you make them in the XML Editor.

MadCap Software: Flare allows you to collapse whole blocks of content in the editor making it easier to locate and edit a specific part of the content. Any block element or heading group can be collapsed.

MadCap Software: Flare allows for easy addition of code snippets with the Code Snippet Editor. The code snippets also include automatic syntax highlighting based on a selected coding language that works for all output types.

MadCap Software: Style Inspector lets you see and edit the style details of the source stylesheet while also showing a preview of how these changes affect certain content files in real-time.

MadCap Software: Flare includes advanced WYSIWYG tools for editing your stylesheets without having to be a CSS expert. This allows your to easily create, update and maintain your branding guidelines across multiple projects.

MadCap Software: Using Flare's File Tagging feature, topics can be tagged with author, status, or other pieces of metadata as required. Unlimited numbers of new tags can be created by the authoring team for anything that they may need.

Flare also allows authors to add Description data to each individual topic as well as other metadata for the 'Online" Targets.

MadCap Software: The Link Viewer window pane lets you see what other files a particular file is linked to and from. You can see incoming links from other files, outgoing links to other files and output targets associated with the selected file. This dynamic pane can be set to change when a new topic is selected or keep the data from the topic that you had previously selected..

MadCap Software: Flare features structure bars to give a visual representation of content hierarchy.

MadCap Software: Edit all of your content in a built-in, easy-to-use editor that allows you to see the structure of the document as well as all of the mark up without having to worry about it.

• Easily edit and format content.
• Split the editor to see the code while editing.
• Sync the selections between the code and the editor in real-time.
• Auto-complete tags and attributes when typing in the text editor.
• Syntax coloring for CSS and XHTML in the text editor.
• Flare also allows you to use other code editors to add and edit content.

You can embed special content such as videos, full web pages or documents into a topic using an IFrame element. This provides an easy way to quick embed content within an existing topic.

MadCap Software: Drag and drop files to copy into the project or to import and convert to Flare topics.

• MadCap Flare: Robust import UI provides a lot of flexibility and options to import your existing .doc and .docx files into a new or existing project. You have control over where your files break, whether to retain your formatting or not, style mapping options, import equations and many more advanced options.

MadCap Flare: allows you to import Markdown documents into new or existing projects, select the folder to import it to and whether or not to import any resources such linked images. Flare also supports importing from a selected folder of Markdown documents linking to them and auto-importing before generating selected outputs. In addition, you have control over

• How the files break into different topics,
• How Markdown styles are mapped to your Flare styles,
• Importing equations and code blocks with syntax highlighting,
• Apply table styles upon import, and many more advanced options.

MadCap Software: Excel Spreadsheets can be imported into Flare in 2 different ways:

• As Topics, Flare will convert your content and place worksheets into topics. Title text on a worksheet tab will become a heading in the Flare topic.
• As Snippets, Flare will convert your content and place each worksheet into a separate snippet.

MadCap Software: Imports the content and project files used in RoboHelp^® while reserving all of your content and most other items such as conditions, variables, snippets, glossaries, index entries, TOCs and more.

MadCap Software: Easily import legacy HTML Help Projects (.hhp) into Flare so you don’t have to spend the time recreating content.

MadCap Software: Flare has a native DITA import that not only keeps your content but all of the DITA meta-data (including relationship table data) during the import. There is no requirement for installing any external or third-party components, the entire process is handled by a transformation process within Flare.

MadCap Software: Flare allows you to import HTML into a project, select the project folder to import it to and whether or not to import any resources such as images, style sheets, etc. Flare also allows users to point to a folder of HTML files and link to them and auto-import before generating selected outputs.

MadCap Software: At times users have been stuck with an old legacy CHM file that they need to update but no longer have the project. With Flare you can import the CHM into a new Flare project and save countless hours of recreating the content.

MadCap Software: Import all or specific files (content, project files, etc.) from another Flare Project. Do this import once to seed a new project or “link” to the project to import automatically before generating specific outputs.

MadCap Software: Import from Confluence pages and associated resources into a Flare project.

MadCap Software: Authors wanting to convert from Doc-To-Help to Flare can directly import their content into Flare. The import process will import the content as well as maintain other items such as variables, groups, etc. During the import, those items will be converted to the equivalent item in Flare.

MadCap Software: MadCap offers a free XML conversion tool that will use the published XML output from Author-it® and convert it to a MadCap Flare project while maintaining all project and source files. The utility converts the table of contents of Author-it^® books into Flare topics. Embedded topics become Flare snippets, while variables, styles, glossaries, context IDs and index keywords are maintained through the conversion process.

You can import your FrameMaker®, Microsoft® Word files and HTML files, etc., link to them and re-import them before every build. This allows you to have people in your organization create content in tools that they already use and automatically incorporate any changes they make into your next build. Flare also gives you the option to unlink and relink these imported files and even set an override in the target.

The External Resources window pane lets you select and maintain groups of external files that you want to share among Flare projects. External resources can be virtually any local or network files that you have access to (e.g., images, PDF files, Flare project files). From the External Resources window pane, you can easily bring external files into a project (i.e., a copy of the file is added to your Flare project) and keep them synchronized with the source files through mappings.

MadCap Software: Flare allows you to stitch PDFs together simply by adding them to the project's TOC. This can be handy if you have content that resides in a PDF, a EULA for example, that you already have approved and want to add to your PDF output. Another use for this feature can be for assembling multi-language PDFs.

MadCap Software: MadCap Flare supports the creation of both multiple choice and multiple response questions. These questions can be used as simple test questions or be turned into knowledge check questions which include a submit button that provides immediate feedback for the learner. The content used in the questions can also be single sourced so that similar text or answers can be easily shared between questions or customized to be unique for different outputs.

MadCap Software: Existing content can be quickly converted into an eLearning question. This means you can either import content from other files such as a Microsoft^® Word document or take existing content from a topic and convert it to questions that can be used in a knowledge check or a graded test.

MadCap Software: MadCap Flare supports the creation of interactive eLearning courses and tests. Each topic can be converted to be part of a course and/or a test. Several options are available when creating tests, including the ability to randomize answers, assign a passing score, customize test result pages showing quiz results and limit the number of test attempts.

MadCap Flare makes it easy to streamline your content to be used with a Learning Management System. You can generate SCORM-compliant (SCORM 2004, 1.2) and xAPI-compliant (Tin Can) courses directly from MadCap Flare to upload to any external LMS or LRS. The eLearning packages can also be customized with settings to track based on the learners test result or percentage of the course completed.

MadCap Software: A streamlined review workflow is available between Flare and MadCap Central. This process allows you to add non-Flare users—i.e., subject matter experts (SMEs)—to your Central license. Then you can collaborate with SMEs (and other authors) by viewing and working with the same Flare content files (i.e., topics and snippets) in a lightweight editor. The review process includes support for addition for tables, images, lists, definition lists and modification of eLearning questions and code snippets.

MadCap Software: With MadCap Contributor, anyone in the company can create content and send it to a Flare author for inclusion in a Flare project. This content is written in XML so there is no data loss since there is no code conversion, both products "speak the same language".

MadCap Software: Anyone in the company can review, annotate, and/or edit Flare topics using MadCap Contributor. This all happens in the native XML of the Flare topics file so there is no chance of data loss since there is no code conversion. With Flare, every "change" in a topic is marked for review whether it is adding or removing text, tables, images, applying conditional tags, applying inline formatting, etc. Reviewing content using annotations with MadCap Contributor is free.

MadCap Software: In Flare you can import content and project files contained in another Flare project, thus allowing you to maintain the information in one location but reuse it in any other project. You can include or exclude particular types of files (e.g., topics, snippets, stylesheets, glossaries, targets), specific individual files, or files that have certain condition tags applied. Simply use the include/exclude methods that work best for you.

This is different from a simple import process because in this case, the imported files remain linked to the source project. This allows you to make future updates to those files in just one place–in the source project file. When you perform ongoing imports using your previous settings, Flare recognizes changes to the source files. Therefore, the new files can be brought over, replacing the outdated files.

MadCap Software: Whether you are a single author or on a team, you can choose a location to store your dictionary so it can be used by all of your projects.

MadCap Software: Choose how your content is organized, whether everything is one project or separate projects. Upload as many projects as you wish to Central and choose who has access and their level of access to project activities including which users or teams have access to add and remove content and manage builds of each project.

MadCap Software: MadCap Central supports full task management including assigning a priority, deadline and also an option to associate the task with a project.

MadCap Software: MadCap Central supports creating checklists to keep track of work related to projects on Central. The checklists can be created based on the files in the project, or they can be custom created for any random thing that needs to be completed. Checklists can also be saved as templates to be reused in the future.

MadCap Software: MadCap Central offers fully customizable dashboards for each project as well as an overall dashboard for the overall license. Each dashboard can be customized to show any number of widgets including storage used, choice of reports, build activity, bookmarks, sites, tasks and more.

MadCap Software: Easily track usage on any hosted website or desktop output using MadCap Central. Data collected include searched phrases from end-users and the number and type of results returned, most visited topic topics, context-sensitive help calls, etc.

Host the content anywhere, not just with MadCap Central, and start gathering data analytics immediately.

MadCap Software: You can export an entire MadCap Flare project, or parts of one, to another location. One reason you might want to use this feature is to quickly and easily archive projects, especially if you have an extremely large Flare project and need to archive only parts of it. Another use for this feature is translation. If you only need a portion of a parent project to be translated, you don't want to send the translator all the files, but rather a smaller version of the project containing only the files requiring translation.

MadCap Software: Don't let your build process stop you from being productive. With Flare you can start and schedule/queue several builds from the project that you are working on or other projects while continuing to work.

MadCap Software: Group various targets together so that they can be compiled and published at the same time. Batch targets can even be scheduled to generate and publish through the scheduler.

MadCap Software: Not only does Flare create a report for warnings and errors while compiling, but it allows you to save the report to a "dynamic log" file. This file allows you to open the topic and double-click the individual error messages to resolve them. Flare will also highlight the area that contains the error in the open topic when possible.

Flare also allows the author to turn on and off the types of errors displayed during a compile.

Users can specify where they would like the build logs saved with Flare.

MadCap Software: Use Flare’s Project Organizer to create folders and organize all of your targets. Store them in any structure that you choose so they can be easily found and used.

You can add pre- or post-build events to your target. This lets you run command-line events before or after the target is generated. This allows you to change files before you build or after your build is complete.

Not only can you generate professional print outputs from Flare, but you can generate digital "Online" outputs from it too.

• CHM
• DITA
• Responsive HTML5
• Eclipse Help
• WebHelp
• WebHelp Plus

MadCap Software: Create a new Industry changing output based on HTML5. You can now break the traditional tripane look and feel and customize your end user's experience.

Use the Top Navigation or Side Navigation skin for your navigation, along with options to fully customize search and menu components to further customize your output look and feel.

MadCap Software: In addition to HTML5 output with top navigation and side navigation options, MadCap Flare also gives the option to build an output without factory-provided navigation. By choosing "none" for the HTML5 skin, you can build an output with either no navigation at all or a custom-designed navigation, search, and more using easy-to-use component skins.

MadCap Software: Produce basic HTML files that are free of JavaScript, MadCap-specific tags and not dependent upon other MadCap-generated files. The output does not include any skins, search, navigation, or other extra features; it is simply your single-sourced content. This is ideal for porting your output to other types of systems; Ticketing, CMS, and others.

MadCap Software: Flare has a powerful favicon editor that allows for unique icons per platform for HTML5 icons.

MadCap Software: You can now choose any browser installed on your computer to open and view the output for a target from the project ribbon, target editor or Builds window.

MadCap Software: Flare makes it easy to choose which content is included when compiling online outputs including the option to include all content, content linked only to the TOC, and also content linked directly and indirectly from the target.

MadCap Software: Flare's multilingual functionality has been improved to make it easier to create and build multilingual output. You can now seamlessly create multilingual outputs for each of Flare’s output types.

If you have translated any of your existing Flare projects, simply link the translated projects in the Target file and let Flare build all the translated projects into a single output.

A Language Selector button added to the topic toolbar skin allows end users to select which language they want to use when viewing the help.

MadCap Software: In addition to being able to easily automate the publishing of your content with command line builds, you can also automate the publish process with support for passing credentials through command line using madbuild.

MadCap Software: You can add pre- or post-build events to your target. This lets you run command-line events before or after the target is generated. This allows you to change files before you build or after your build is complete.

MadCap Software: Full accessibility for tables in HTML5 output with the option to add captions and summaries along with Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) attributes applied automatically to tables in the output.

MadCap Software: For Web and PDF Accessibility, Flare gives you control over what warnings to report for your 508/Accessibility compliance. You can save this log and double-click each error to open the topic and fix the problem.

MadCap Software: Flare offers native Eclipse Help output. Create an Eclipse Help Target with custom settings, batch build capabilities, command line integration, and all of the power and flexibility of other targets in Flare.

MadCap Software: This output type is identical to the regular WebHelp output in most ways. However, WebHelp Plus works on a Microsoft ® Web server running Microsoft ® Internet Information Services (IIS), ASP.NET, and Microsoft ® Indexing Service. You and your users can take advantage of some advanced features, including searching for non-XHTML content (PDF files, MS Word Documents, etc.), faster server-side search, and automatic run-time merging. This functionality is also available for HTML5 output.

MadCap Software: Ability to publish directly to Salesforce ^® Classic and Lightning Knowledge using the MadCap Connect for Salesforce ^® . Functionality includes the following:

• Choose the Rich Text Field used for published topic content.
• Choose category mapping for articles at the topic level using their position in the Flare TOC.
• Include summary in Salesforce ^® articles using topic descriptions.
• Manage all the files and assets published including cleaning up previously published files that are no longer part of a republish.
• Multilingual output publishing that maintains the link between source and translated articles.
• Full control of the URL Name assigned to published articles.
• Update existing Salesforce ^® articles regardless if they were previously published by Flare if they have matching URL Names.
• Choose to store the publish log in a Shared Asset Library in Salesforce ^® .

MadCap Software: Ability to publish directly to Zendesk Help Center using the MadCap Connect for Zendesk.

• Map to categories, sections and also nested sections using the TOC.
• Apply Zendesk labels to published articles.
• Manage all the files and assets published including cleaning up previously published files that are no longer part of a republish.
• Multilingual output publishing that maintains the link between source and translated articles.
• Generate a Zendesk theme that includes styles and JavaScript for the published content.

MadCap Software: Ability to publish directly to ServiceNow ^® Knowledge Base using the MadCap Connect for ServiceNow ^® . Functionality includes the following:

• Map to categories using the TOC.
• Apply ServicesNow ^® tags and keywords to published articles.
• Manage all the files published including cleaning up previously published files that are no longer part of a republish.
• Multilingual output publishing that maintains the link between source and translated articles.

MadCap Software: MadCap Central provides all the resources needed to support building, hosting and publishing of your private and public content including build scheduling and site management of your projects and outputs. No additional IT resources nor hardware are necessary to support this workflow and ensure your content is accessible to your consumers.

MadCap Software: Outputs built from Flare or Central can be stored on Central to be viewed or downloaded at any time. This allows authors to compare results between different builds. The builds can be locked to be preserved or deleted at any time.

MadCap Software: MadCap Central offers the ability to customize the look of each page used by consumers of your site including user invite, login, profile and 404 pages. One theme can be used for all sites or each site can be configured with different themes.

MadCap Software: MadCap Central provides a default domain for all hosted output or linking your output with a custom host mapped domain.

MadCap Software: MadCap Central supports customizing the license and site vanity for our hosted outputs allowing you to select a meaningful URL that is easier to recognize for your consumers. This is also useful if you have multiple versions of an output and want to have a different URL for each version.