Author-it Software Corporation today announced the release of version 5.0. Yay!

This version has loads of new features. It starts with a brand-new interface that is similar to Microsoft Office 2007 with the ribbon and "pearl" in the window's upper left corner that leads to more options.

One of the new big features is Author-it Xtend, a patent-pending technology that uses intelligent "fuzzy logic" matching to provide a faster, more efficient way to reuse and share content and knowledge within an organization's library. This functionality is available to all content creators and can be customized. (Note: Author-it Xtend requires the SQL library...it can't be used with JET.)

Publishing Profiles are another big feature. As users know, Author-it uses media objects to pass layout information when publishing. Until now, it's been a bit of a pain to publish something like a Word document on both Letter and A4 paper, or to create HTML outputs that are branded differently. I've created some workarounds, but I have to remember all the steps. With Publishing Profiles, I will no longer need my workarounds...I can set it all up in AIT. So once I get 5.0 installed, I can publish branded outputs without doing anything afterward...I can store all the steps inside a profile. (For example, I license some of my training materials, and now I will be able to brand them for the licensees.) And I can throw away the sticky with my "branding" notes :-) (Just a note...I could have set this up so that all the information was stored within my library, but it was easier at the time to do it this way. And because I did set it up like this, it will be much easier to use Publishing Profiles.)

For more information on the 5.0 upgrade, see the Author-it Knowledge Center.

All Author-it users with maintenance plans can get the v5 release, and should receive an email this week. However, users must attend a webinar that discusses the new features before receiving a link to the download. In addition, users will receive an evaluation license and a test script to use with their library (or libraries). After returning the test to Author-it, a license file will be generated and emailed to match the currently installed 4.5 licenses.

Desktop and Workgroup users will be given the option to upgrade to Enterprise Edition by paying the difference in licensing fees. Talk to your reseller or someone at Author-it Software Corporation for more information. (I'm not a reseller, so I don't know exactly what's involved.)

If you need training, I'll be creating new materials for 5.0 and hope to have them ready by the beginning of December. (I know...that's so far away! But I'm speaking at the Yggdrasil, LavaCon, and tcworld conferences between now and mid-November, and I still haven't figured out how to get more hours in a day.) I'll also be putting together some "upgrading from version 4 to version 5.0" materials, but I'm not sure yet what they'll include.

(Lots of vendor announcements this week...wonder what's next?)