Dreamweaver vs Robohelp

[Guest]

Pros/Cons?

Has anyone here converted from Dreamwever to Robohelp and if so, what was your experience? I am looking to switch over and wanted some feedback. Currently, I am using CS3 to manage about 25k files.

Thanks!

[Willam_van_Weelden]

Hi,

Dreamweaver and RoboHelp have completely different audiences. Dreamweaver is for creating webpages and web applications. RoboHelp is for creating help content. If you want to switch, you can import your existing htm into RoboHelp.

The question is, what do you want to do? Do you want to create websites, use server side scripting or a database? Choose Dreamweaver. Do you want a help authoring tool designed to help you create and maintain text? Choose RoboHelp. RoboHelp has features that are very usefull for managing contact, such as:

  * Variables

  * Snippets

  * Easy TOC creation

  * Several output types

  * Existing methods for context sensitivity

  * Index creation

Be sure to visit the HAT-matrix (http://hat-matrix.com/) before making a choice. First determine what you need to do, RoboHelp might be the right tool, but it may not be the right tool for you.

Greet,

Willam

[Guest]

Thank you William!

[Guest]

A few follow-up questions based on the answer above.

Can Robohelp manage robust content? I have 25k documents that I currently manage and I am reading reviews of Robohelp crashing with large sites.

Can MySQL be used with Robohelp?

Can Robohelp work with any other type of database to manage it's content?

Thanks!

[Willam_van_Weelden]

Hi,

• I have quite a lot of topics of 25KB+, never had any problems with those.
• RH does not support databases. You can use RoboHelp Server with databases to get usage statistics and access control. I don't use it and I don't know what you want to do with the database.
  
• You can use source control such as VSS, TFS or RH's own RoboSource Control. This basically puts all the project files in source control. The question is, what kind of content control do you expect from a database?
  

Greet,

Willam

[Guest]

Thank you again William, and I apologize for any confusion. My site is comprised of seperate html documents, about 25,000 in all.

About 2 GB. Not sure if that changes anything.

[Willam_van_Weelden]

Hi,

That may change something. I don't have experience with such large projects, but it probably is a good idea to look into merged projects. See http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/merging_webhelp/merging_method_rh8.htm

I try to avoid mered help, but others may tell you more about it.

Greet,

Willam