Learn Why Leading Organizations Are Choosing MadCap Software Over Adobe^® FrameMaker^®

~767 MB

2.9 GB required to install

Flare can be installed on both 64-bit and 32-bit versions of Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10.

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.

Flare is designed from the ground up to be a topic based single-sourcing tool that focuses on maximizing content reuse, authoring efficiency and multiple outputs from the same source.

With Flare, you can maintain your source and output to many different output types without having to purchase a suite of tools. There are no limitations on the number or variations of the different targets available.

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

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 now has a ribbon called Project Analysis that will analyze projects and provide more “dynamic” reports to help you troubleshoot your projects.

Project Analysis Scans go well beyond just reporting; it finds and helps correct critical issues, makes suggestions for content reuse, helps clean up redundant formatting, styles and much more.

Flare gives you the flexibility to store your projects on shared network drives as well as locations on other local hard drives. You will be able to author, generate outputs, etc. on these projects as you would if they were stored locally.

If you need samples or a project to get you started, Flare includes several templates that are specially designed to increase efficiency. Each is designed with a specific output (or multiple outputs). Choose from Knowledge Base, Online, Online and Print, Policies and Procedures, User Guides, Product Fold-outs and many more. Additional templates are available online.

Flare Project files are entirely in XML so you can send your entire project off to be translated, not just the output. Since all of the project files are XML, you can easily use any existing translation process and any common translation tools, or you can use MadCap Lingo to facilitate and streamline translation.

MadCap Lingo is a powerful, easy-to-use translation environment tool (TMS) designed to assist technical writers, documentation specialists and professional translators in the translation and localization process.

Flare also offers a Project Export Feature that allows you to export a project based on the target, condition, file tag and more. This allows you to send only the files that are marked for translation or used in a specific target.

Full integration with MadCap Mimic. Tutorial and demo files created with Mimic can be used in Flare projects and they can share Flare project attributes, such as Variables or Conditional Tags. If you need to customize your documentation for multiple customers, you can create a variable called "Customer Name". This variable can be used in your Flare content and can also be used in your Mimic-built tutorial/demo files. When it is time to publish documentation for "XYZ Corp" you do a simple variable definition once. Both your Flare content and your Mimic content are automatically updated for that customer.

Browser displays within Flare have been updated to use the modern chromium browser.

Built in micro content editor allows authoring and reuse of existing content to create new machine and AI-ready micro content. Editor also provides options for full control over generated micro content in the output.

Allows users to create responsive layouts for content. Responsive layouts provide a way of putting your content into a grid that shifts as it responds to screens of different sizes.

The text analysis tool in Flare lets you evaluate your files for things such as readability, average sentence length and more.

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.

Flare makes it easy create and edit definition lists from the UI.

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 editors to add and edit content.

Flare allows content creators to author content in a modern XHTML editor that renders the content as it would appear in Standard (web), Responsive, or Print modes. The authoring environment automatically changes based on the user’s selection. This gives the author a visual representation of their content in both online and print before publishing their output.

The editor can be customized further by selecting from existing mediums or page layouts to display the content as close to the output’s settings as possible.

MadCap Flare’s Layout Resizer allows you to view how your content might look for different screen widths and experiment with these custom sizes. You can quickly see how content will look, create new media queries if needed, and see how the specific style settings affect your content without having to generate output.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 selected.

You can now control case sensitivity and variants (Stemming of terms).

Variables can be used in Glossary Terms and Definitions.

Flare supports equations written in Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) and LaTeX. After you've created an equation, you can then copy and paste it into Flare's editor.

• Use any number of free equations editors or your own editor.
• Simply copy and paste the code into Flare’s equation editor.
• The output of equations can be SVG or PNG images.

Flare offers an easy-to-use editor for creating CSS to define the look and feel of tables that can be reused and shared between projects.

The editor also allows you to create Mediums for the table styles, making it easy to single-source tables and make them appear the way you want them to look in various outputs.

Use a simple CSS style to define image thumbnail characteristics and then reuse that style on hundreds of images in a project as necessary. This brings consistency and automation to the use of thumbnail images for the team and improves usability for the customers.

Link to or Embed your Vimeo and YouTube movies right through Flare's UI.

Flare allows content creators to author content in a modern XHMTL editor that renders the content as it would appear in Standard (web), Responsive or Print modes. The authoring environment automatically changes based on the user’s selection. This gives the author a visual representation of their content in both online and print before publishing their output.

The editor can be customized further by selecting from existing mediums or page layouts to display the content as close to the output’s settings as possible.

An advanced Character Map UI allows easy location and insertion of symbols and special characters that authors may need. Other features include being able to manage favorites and recently used, search, enter hex codes, use a character with a particular font, and assign a 'Quick Character' that has the F11 key assigned to it.

MadCap Capture is free for customers on the latest release of Flare. With full integration into Flare, users can capture screens, apply call-outs and other objects, single-source images to various output types, keep text and images separate for translation ease, and much more.

A relationship table is an element used to link related topics together. It is similar to concept links or related topics links. Although a relationship table is a common feature in DITA, you do not need to be using DITA or know anything about DITA in order to take advantage of relationship tables in Flare.

If you import content from DITA files that already contain relationship tables, those tables are retained in Flare. You can also create new relationship tables in a Flare project and insert relationship proxies into individual topics. In the online output, the end result is one or more hyperlinks that let users quickly open related topics. In the print-based output, the end result is one or more references to related topics with the appropriate page number(s).

Flare offers language support for numerous dictionaries and hyphenation rules that you can extend using openoffice.org.

A graphical interface to access document structure without disturbing the content in the visual editor. These bars are located around the topic and visually show the structure of the XML. Not only do structure bars let you see the XML tag, but you can also perform numerous tasks by using them. If you right-click on a structure bar, a context menu opens. From the menu, you can select from several options to take action on the content associated with that XML tag.

Using Flare's File Tagging feature, topics can be tagged with author, status, or other pieces of metadata as required. New tags can be created by the authoring team as needed.

Configurable author interface. Select English, French, German or Japanese interface at startup. Change your mind later. No additional versions to buy; these language interfaces are all included with Flare.

For those who need to control sensitive information (such as personal data like social security numbers) while publishing in a legal environment where the use of a Conditional Tag would not meet the legal requirements, Flare supports Redacted Text. This renders the text unreadable and inaccessible without changing the flow of the document.

Flare fully supports the CSS standard as well as allowing custom MadCap objects to be formatted using special MadCap properties. CSS files can be edited using Flare's Basic, Advanced or Internal Text Editor, or can be edited using your favorite CSS editor.

Use the full-featured CSS editor to edit properties, create classes, pseudo-classes, import styles, link styles, add mediums, edit complex selectors, disable styles, add comments to styles and more.

Flare fully supports CSS variables to help improve stylesheet readability and ease of use when making updates.

Variables in Flare are optimized with single-sourcing in mind. Flare offers the ability to have multiple definitions for each variable as well as select the desired definition or completely change it in each target. You can also create Date/Time variables based on Microsoft®'s "Custom Date and Time Format Strings."

Find and replace elements windows allows any user to quickly find and make changes to tags, classes, attribute and more. Together with the Find and replace text window, users can quickly update their documentation to a new structure or clean up content after an import.

Use a system variables to ensure that your TOC entries are always in sync with your topic titles when creating online outputs.

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.

Flare makes it easy create and edit definition lists from the UI.

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 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.

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

Flare's 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 and link to them and auto-import 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, import equations, code blocks with syntax highlighting, apply tables styles upon import, and many more advanced options.

Excel Spreadsheets can be imported 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

In Flare you can import content from files that have either a .dita or .ditamap extension. You can start a new project by importing DITA file content, or you can import DITA file content into an existing project. During import you can assign style classes to items, set up an option to re-import the files before a target is built, etc.

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.

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.

Import from Confluence pages and associated resources into a Flare project

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.

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 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.

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 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.

A streamlined review workflow is available between this version of 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.

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 are "speaking the same language".

MadCap Central provides seamless integration with Flare.

Flare integrates directly into the free Subversion revision control system and also provides direct connectivity with Microsoft® Visual Source Safe, Microsoft® Team Foundation Server, Microsoft® SharePoint, Perforce and Git. This allows you to work with Flare projects stored in these source control environments without a third-party plugin. Flare also can support additional source control solutions that conform to the Microsoft® Source Code Control APIs (Microsoft® SCC APIs).

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

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.

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

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.

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 double-click the individual error messages. 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.

Flare supports command-line compiling, the ability to schedule builds and publishing outputs, allowing you to maximize your authoring time and build/publish your outputs at the end of the working day or overnight.

Build into Flare is a command-line build interface. This allows you to incorporate Flare into existing processes easier and allows you to build your outputs outside of the Flare environment. You can build a single target, multiple targets or batch files that exist in the project.

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.

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

Create a new Industry changing output based off of HTML5. You can now break the traditional tri-pane look and feel and customize your end user's experience.

Use the TopNav skin for your navigation or use any of the Skin Components combined with template pages to further customize your look and feel.

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.

Do you just need your topics without any navigation? No problem. Just select the "(none)" option in the HTML5 target.

HTML5 output is 508 compliant will full keyboard navigation along with Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) tags, the ability to “Skip to Main Content” using the Tab button, and more.

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.

Dynamically change the content itself (text and multimedia) based on the format. Text, images and video can be automatically changed based on screen size and format to provide the most appropriate and personalized content to your end users.

Flare has a powerful favicon editor that allows for unique icons per platform for HTML5 icons

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.

You can now choose a specific browser or viewer when opening the output for a target from the Project ribbon or from the Target Editor.

It is easier than ever before to single-source your content to Print Outputs. Let Flare automatically include a pre-formatted, TOC, Index and Glossary in the Print outputs. If you want to override the defaults you are free to customize everything as needed.

Flare makes it easy to created tagged PDF output that meets the requirements for PDF/UA compliance. The PDF/UA standard enhances the readability for people with disabilities. UA stands for Universal Accessibility; this standard will work with assistive technology that assists users through reading and navigation.

Easily track usage on any hosted website or desktop output using MadCap Central.

Content can be hosted anywhere, not just with MadCap Central, and start gathering data analytics immediately.

Associate micro content with CSH IDs and use it for field -level or embedded help.

MadCap Central supports hosting private outputs that require a login in order to view the output. Easily customize the look of the output from Flare and Central.

The Eclipse Help output type is designed specifically for content developers who want to use Flare to author an Eclipse Help plugin. Flare allows you to create a target for Eclipse Help and generate it as easily and seamlessly as any of the other output types.

Along with producing PDF output, Flare gives you several other solutions for print:

• Native PDF output
• FrameMaker^® files (.book, .fm, .mif)
• Microsoft^® XPS
• Microsoft^® Word (.doc & .docx)
• Microsoft^® Office 365
• XHTML book
• EPUB output
• MOBI/Kindle output

Flare fully supports HTML Help Output (CHM) allowing the user control over most options available to the output. Also, with a single file and Flare's ability to merge CHM files, you can set up a system that allows to you merge CHMs at runtime.

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 will build all the translated projects into a single output.

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

The BOM is a Unicode character that appears at the start of a text stream. Most authors probably want to disable the BOM. But if you are hosting content on a web server that requires BOM (such as a LINUX machine), you can enable it.

Elasticsearch can be added to any TopNav or SideNav target.

Google Search can be added to any TopNav or SideNav target.

Ability to provide featured/targeted content in search results with the use of micro content from the project. These results are supported in both MadCap search and Elasticsearch.

Ability to publish directly to Salesforce^® Classic and Lightning Knowledge using the MadCap Connect for Salesforce^®. Functionality include 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.

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.

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 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.

Outputs built from MadCap 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.