Microsoft told the Help MVPs yesterday that the code base for the WinHelp viewer for Vista is stable, but additional testing is required. At this time, it looks like the viewer will be released in late February.

More information as I get it...

Hat tip: HAT-Matrix.com

;-)

Lots of little things to post about...

• Windows Vista Business Test Drive and other Vista information
• Various bits of RoboHelp 6 info
• Upcoming conferences and other speaking engagements
• Managing Virtual Teams book

Read more!

Jesse changed schools right before the Christmas holiday, going from a Montessori-like school to a Catholic school. (Talk about culture shock! But that's another story ;-) )

He now has daily homework assignments. And research papers are due on a regular basis, like the one last week about komodo dragons. Because his handwriting is so bad, I told him to type it instead, and set him up in Publisher.

As he typed, Publisher very nicely showed him any misspelled words. Because he kept using the arrow keys to position his cursor, I taught him about the Home key ("goes to the beginning of the line") and the End key ("goes to the end of the line").

"Thanks, mom", he said. "Where's the Middle key?"

Yesterday's announcement about RoboHelp 6 has spawned multiple emails to different lists and several blog entries because of the version number. So I went looking in my favorite spot for RoboHelp release information, Rick Stone's RoboWizard.

Combined with my memory (which, granted, has some holes sometimes), I now present the following information.

RoboHelp version 8, also known as RoboHelp 2000, was released in...yeah, 2000. I remember this version well, because I wrote a book for Sam's Publishing in 1999 called "Teach Yourself RoboHELP 2000 for HTML Help". It was released early in 2000, right after the software itself.

RoboHelp 7 was released in January, 1999. This is another version I remember well, because we started 1998 with RoboHelp 5. In 13 months, Blue Sky Software released RoboHelp 5, 5.5, 6 (there it is!), and 7. It was hell being a RoboHelp trainer that year, because we were all updating our materials every 2.5 months trying to keep up.

I don't know why Adobe dropped the "X". After all, it's a lot easier to refer to X5 as opposed to RoboHelp Office X5. We can't just refer to "6" and hope that folks actually know what we're talking about. I'm thinking that maybe marketing got involved...by calling it "RoboHelp 6", they've just about guaranteed that the tool name will also be included.

It's just a thought ;-)

Sarah O'Keefe posted a message at Palimpsest about MonkeyPi's review of RoboHelp 6. (She also had some interesting comments on RoboHelp itself, like its lack of XML, and about Adobe and their marketing department. I love reading Sarah's blog.)

So I headed over to MonkeyPi to see what was going on. And MP is obviously on many of the email lists I subscribe to, and obviously gets many of the same RSS feeds that I do, because the entry started by talking about yesterday's deluge because of RoboHelp 6's release.

And my blog entry from yesterday is mentioned at the start of the second paragraph. "One blogger I really respect claimed, "Congratulations to Adobe for getting this out technically ahead of time!". First, thanks for the compliment, MP :-) But second...what I said didn't mean that it's a great, good, or bad product. It means that Adobe beat the estimated delivery date by months (depending on who you believe, RoboHelp was supposed to be released by either the end of March or the end of June of this year. Or maybe never.).

The thing is, I...um...well, I can't actually provide a review of RoboHelp 6 just yet. I was on the beta list, and did a little bit with it when the beta was first released. But then I kinda committed the unpardonable sin of updating my software ;-) Yep, I upgraded to Office 2007...and couldn't get the later betas to install. I haven't been in the mood to install Office 2003 again and now it doesn't matter, given that the beta is no longer.

It's too bad that the kadov tags are still around. Personally, I'd like to see a version of RoboHelp that uses DreamWeaver as its editor, but I was saying that when Macromedia bought eHelp.

We're going to see more information on RoboHelp 6 in the upcoming weeks. Techshoret is holding their TCC conference in Israel tomorrow, and both Rick Stone and Peter Grainge are giving presentations. Others who were beta testers will start using RoboHelp for real projects.

And folks will post more questions about RoboHelp on HATT and TCP and TechWhirl again. The difference is, now folks will be talking/asking/complaining about RoboHelp 6 (where'd the X go, anyway?), instead of talking/asking/complaining about RoboHelp X5.

Life goes on.

Less than a year ago, Adobe announced that a new version of RoboHelp would be released by the end of Q1 or Q2 of 2007. (See Joe Welinske's article A Revived Future for RoboHelp for more information.)

And today, RoboHelp 6 was released. At Adobe's site, you can get information on both X6 and RoboHelp Server, and you can read various articles:

• What's New in RoboHelp X6? by Michael Hu
• Getting Started with RoboHelp 6 by Peter Grainge
• Using the Conditional Build Tags Feature in RoboHelp HTML 6 by Rick Stone
• Getting Started with RoboControl Source 3 in RoboHelp 6 by Matthew Ellison

There have been a few changes. Adobe has consolidated products, so that now two products are offered instead of seven. ("The authoring and publishing features of RoboHelp Office, RoboHelp Office Pro, RoboHelp Office Pro for .NET, and RoboInfo have been consolidated into RoboHelp 6. RoboHelp Server 6 includes all the server-based functionality from RoboHelp Office Pro, RoboHelp Office Pro for .NET, and RoboEngine Connectivity Pack.") RoboHelp 6 now includes variables, Adobe Acrobat Elements, and command line generation.

Congratulations to Adobe for getting this out, technically ahead of time!

Well, if it's a hyphen, you're in trouble.

I've spent the better part of this morning making travel arrangements for trips to Virginia, Seattle, and Long Beach (via San Diego). Amazingly enough, I spell my name the same way everywhere...on credit cards, on checks, on airline tickets, on my passport. But most online retailers make me change it from James-Tanny to JamesTanny (and CamelCase isn't a problem, just the hyphen).

Sometimes, to really confuse me, they'll let me use the hyphen for my contact information, and then refuse my credit card because the Name field includes it...and this is on sites which automatically fill in the name on the credit card from the contact information. (On one site, the error message was "incorrect ZIP code".)

I suppose there has been some improvement, because I can now use the hyphen in many contact information fields. But I'm still surprised at the number of places where my hyphen can't be used.