RoboHelp Packager for Adobe AIR (BETA)

[Akshay_Madan]

It is so exciting. It been just a few months since we released Adobe RoboHelp 7 and a brand new Technical Communication Suite, and today we are ready to share with you guys what we perceive as the future of Online Help. All I can say is that Time flies like an arrow. With this, I welcome you all to this new world of Web 2.0 and the future of Online Help - check out the Public Beta of RoboHelp Packager for Adobe AIR

The tool is available for Free of Cost and can be used by customers who have either Adobe RoboHelp 6 or Adobe RoboHelp 7 or the Technical Communication Suite.

The RoboHelp Packager for Adobe® AIR™ allows you to convert your existing WebHelp files generated using Adobe RoboHelp® to an Adobe AIR application. Help and knowledge bases delivered as Adobe AIR application will have a consistent look and feel across all platforms.

RoboHelp Packager for Adobe AIR can:

Generate a single distributable file similar to a .chm file.
Provide a variety of skins from which a user can choose from. In addition, for any skin a user can choose different themes, which control the look and feel in terms of colors and button/icons images.
Provide a consistent look and feel on all platforms and operating systems.
Enable you to comment, in addition to using other advanced features such as Breadcrumbs, Mini TOC and Security (Digital Signatures).

The output generated after running this tool is an .air file. This is a single file that has built-in logic to install itself. The same file can be installed on any platform that has Adobe® AIR installed. Installing the Adobe AIR runtime is as seamless as installing the Adobe Flash® Player for your browsers.

Another important aspect of the Adobe AIR installer file is that it is a single file that contains all of the information regarding the look and feel of the Help along with the content. It is one package with no separate viewer required.

To read more about the benefits of packaging your help as .air file, please visit the following link:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/robohelp/aboutoutput.html

[Guest]

When you are comparing this to Flash, does this comparison extend to the requirement for each end user to install the Air runtime on their PCs before they can access our RoboHelp system? And that they will also get reminders to update to the latest version of Air runtime?

[Peter Grainge]

Not sure about the updating but the end user will need to install the AIR runtime. There's a topic about AIR on my site.