In The Press
Madcap Software Announces The Arrival Of Flare 2.0
Flare 2.0 - The most powerful, innovative Help authoring tool ever developed.
San Diego, CA, USA – October 2, 2006 — Only 8 months after the introduction of its flagship
product, Flare 1.0, MadCap Software today announced the release of Flare 2.0. Several new features in the latest release of Flare continue the strong momentum created by Flare 1.0. The result is the first true single-sourcing tool with the ability to import and export both Microsoft Word and Adobe® FrameMaker® formats.
The initial release of Flare in February, 2006 provided documentation professionals with a new XML-based authoring tool and an alternative to RoboHelp®, which has not seen a new major release in nearly 3 years.
With Flare 1.0, we were happy we could meet the needs of the Help authoring community, said Anthony Olivier, MadCap Software CEO and former CEO of eHelp Corporation. There were a lot of authors out there who were concerned about the void left by RoboHelp® when eHelp was acquired by Macromedia, and then even more so when Adobe acquired Macromedia. We have now taken the successes of Flare a step further, and with the arrival of Flare 2.0, we have the most powerful, innovative Help authoring tool ever developed.
Highlighted in Flare 2.0 is the support for Adobe® FrameMaker® users. In Flare 1.0, authors were able to import and export Microsoft (NasdaqNM: MSFT) Word documents. In Flare 2.0, they can do the same with FrameMaker®.
Bjorn Backlund, CTO of MadCap Software, remarked, FrameMaker® authors can easily and quickly bring their FrameMaker® documents into a Flare project, and all of their formatting and other settings are transferred seamlessly. They can even continue to author in FrameMaker® if they want. Its completely flexible. When users want to create output, they can export back out to FrameMaker® documents or to any of our online formats, or any combination that they want.
Another major improvement in Flare 2.0 is multi-language support. Documentation professionals can author content in several languages, including English, European languages (including Eastern European languages), and even double-byte languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean. New WebHelp skins also allow users to create Help system interfaces in the language of their choice.
In addition to FrameMaker® and language support, several other new features and enhancements such as auto-numbering, MadCap Capture integration, MadCap Mimic integration, drag-and-drop, and much more round out the latest release of MadCap Flare.
Olivier added, The bottom line is that we were the driving force in leading the community for over a decade with RoboHelp®. We believe that RoboHelp® has reached the end of its life-cycle, and we knew it was time to provide the customers with a new future-proof product. We listen to our customers, quickly respond to their needs and we deliver.
In addition to the upcoming product releases of Capture and Mimic, MadCap team members are busy creating MadCap Blaze, an XML-based alternative to Adobe® FrameMaker®. Blaze is specifically designed for producing lengthy documents for print using the latest technological advances available. It is all part of MadCap Softwares vision of a dream suite of Help and documentation products for its customers.
About MadCap Software
MadCap Software is a trusted resource for thousands of companies around the globe for single-source, multi-channel authoring and publishing solutions designed to streamline the process of developing and delivering training content, learning and development programs, technical documentation, online Help, knowledge bases, and more. From authoring, publishing and translation, to cloud-based content management system, to contribution and review in the cloud, you can streamline content delivery and manage the entire content development lifecycle with MadCap Software. MadCap Software’s services include product training, consulting services, translation and localization, and an advanced developer certification program. Headquartered in San Diego, California, with offices in Austin, TX, MadCap Software is home to some of the most experienced software architects and product experts in the content development industry.
