Well, it's finished. Well...at least this draft is ;-)

It took me a lot longer than I had planned to get this finished. Part of it was because I completely revamped the design, hopefully making it much more usable. (It certainly made it much longer!) The other part is financial...jobs for clients always take priority over volunteer activities.

So thank you for your patience :-)

Some background: several months ago, I was looking for a specific type of software, and I came across a site that compared different applications by feature. I adopted this method for the matrix because I think it provides a lot more information, making it easier for you to determine which tool fits your needs. (I cringe every time I see someone write, "I chose This Wonderful Tool because [insert reason here]", and the reason has nothing to do with how they want to work.)

I do want to explain a few things:

• The new chart is 27 pages long, landscape, letter size. (I haven't tested it, but if it doesn't print well on A4, let me know and I'll adjust the margins.)
• The matrix includes 10 tools. I know that others are available, but these are the ones I see the most questions about. The matrix is not designed to fully cover every possible HAT.
• Several tools are included that technically aren't HATs, given that they publish existing documents (for example, WebWorks Publisher). However, they produce outputs that online Help authors use, and so I've included them.
• The matrix is now divided into sections. Everyone has different needs, and hopefully this new style addresses most of them.
• Every section lists the applicable features. In some cases, no features apply to a specific tool, which means that that row is blank. Typically, I included that feature just because I was sure that someone might ask about it ;-)
• I'm working on descriptions for some of the terms, typically the ones that I think might be confusing. Of course, it could be awhile before I get them finished and linked ;-)

One final note: because of the number of features that are now included, and because I only know some of these tools at the "expert" level, I did something I've never done before...I asked the vendors for input. I created individual copies of the matrix and deleted all information except the specific company's, and then sent the matrix to the eight vendors. (Two of the tools on the list are Microsoft's HCW and HHW.) They made their corrections, which I incorporated. (I'll announce here when I'm notified of mistakes, and I'll correct and upload the matrix.)

Oh! One other note: I did not include RoboHelp in this matrix. I know that nothing has been officially announced. I know that there's an equal chance of Adobe doing nothing as them restarting development. But I'm not comfortable promoting a HAT that hasn't been updated in several years; that has no maintenance plans available; that has no development team that we know of. Should Adobe announce a new version, I will add it back to the matrix at that time.

MadCap Software made their self-imposed deadline last night with the release of the Flare Sneak Peek. This release is not the final release, but more like a fourth beta that everyone can participate in. Technically, this is not the finished version, and MadCap plans on fixing more bugs before releasing the final version by the end of February.

As a result, MadCap does not guarantee that projects created with the Sneak Peek version will be 100% compatible with the final version.

Use this time to evaluate Flare's workflow and functionality. Remember that this is a version 1 release, and more changes are planned for the future.

If you pre-order Flare before 28 February 2006, you can save $350 off the retail price, and they will send you a licensing key that disables the random character generator in the Sneak Peek output.