Sharon Burton

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Topic-based Content Development and Blaze

• Sharon Burton
• Product Manager
• Madcap Software
• sburton_at_madcapsoftware.com

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I am

• Sharon Burton
• Product Manager/Product Evangelist for Madcap
• Been in the Tech Comm business for almost 20
  years
• Previous job as documentation manager at a large
  company in So Cal
• Managed 13 writers scattered all over the world
• Managed a library of hundreds of manuals
• Also a FrameMaker and RoboHELP expert

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What is Topic-based Content Development?

• Topic-based content development focuses effort on
  the topics
• Not the final deliverables
• You dont develop an Admin book or a Users Guide
  or a help, you develop a body of information
  thats helpful to the user
• Eventually, you decide how each piece of
  information is best delivered to the user
• This decision is independent from the information
  development process

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Why Topic-based Content Development?

• Topic-based content development allows you to
  develop information based on the users
  information needs
• Allow the user information to determine the
  deliverables
• For example, after you identify topics, you see
  what sorts of manuals or help or fall out
• Topic-based content development is user focused

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Advantages to you

• Topic-based content development
• Brings the focus of the information to what the
  user needs to know
• Makes your team focus on what the user does
  because each topic comes from a task list you
  develop
• Lets you distribute the project among several
  people
• And prioritize the information
• Allows you to repurpose your user information
• Cheaper to localize
• Matches the engineering process if you work in a
  Use Case or Scenario development environment

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Other Advantages

• You will probably develop less information
• But the quality of the information will be higher
• Reviewing topics is easier than chapters
• Your reviewers may actually review the topics
• Sets you up for DITA when youre ready
• Madcap will be part of that move

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So why am I talking about this?

• This is the best way to develop information in
  Blaze
• Other products, like FrameMaker, PageMaker, or
  InDesign, for example, dont lend themselves to
  this model
• You end up with a large pool of topics about your
  product and your users
• Use Outlines to define the deliverables
• These topics are Admin Guide topics
• Those topics are User Guide topics

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MadCap Blaze

• Topic-based content development
• Can have many topics in a project
• Can import topics from other projects with Master
  Project Linking
• Straight forward UI
• If you know Flare, a very familiar UI
• Sophisticated print related features
• Unicode compliant
• Any left to right language

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Why youll like Blaze

• Formatting sticks
• Intuitive to apply
• Easy to view
• Lists work
• Topic-based creation
• Can have many topics in a project
• Can import topics from other projects using
  Master Project Linking

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More reasons to like Blaze

• XHTML based
• Open architecture
• Define many outputs in one project
• PDF
• Word
• FrameMaker
• XPS
• Outlines in projects define the content in the
  deliverable
• Intuitive conditional text
• Easily view the conditions

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Sharon BurtonProduct ManagerMadcap
Softwaresburton_at_madcapsoftware.com

• Questions?

sburton_at_madcapsoftware.com