I've always loved the WritersUA (formerly WinWriters) Conference, and this year is no exception. I think that Joe did a fantastic job with this year's program...I've heard so many people say "I have to choose!", which is always a good sign of a great conference. The speakers include both old-timers and newbies, which is always fun. And the attendees have been wonderful to talk to and interact with. I've met several folks whose names are familiar (many are on HATT or TechWhirl or TCP), and it's so nice to be able to put faces with names. (Although, as I've discussed a couple of times here at the conference, I have a great memory for names and a great memory for faces...I just don't do so well all the time putting them both together ;-).)

Brian Walker and I gave our "Implementing Accessible Web Design" session today. Apart from the fact that we practiced with my laptop and then used his for the session ;-) (which means that we were doing some really quick testing right before we started), the session went great. Brian used JAWS to read the headings on the slides, and was nice enough to slow the rate wwwwaaaaaayyyyyy down (to 20%) so that we could understand it. (Brian's normal setting sounds like the old FedEx commercial with the fast talker!) We ran some demos that showed just how different accessible and inaccessible websites are...as a sighted user, I know that demos like this really help other sighted users understand. I had a great time, and I know Brian did, too.

The last day of the exhibition was today, and I think I managed to talk to everyone. As is usual at the WritersUA Conference, there was a lot of information on upcoming features (many that I covered yesterday), and I think we're going to see some really cool stuff in the next six to nine months from all of the vendors.

I did find an interesting post on Adobe's Technical Communication blog, where they mention that "There is an increasing trend of promising features in the later versions. This makes the comparison of HATs an exercise in futility. Also,a customer can use only what exists today, not what will come 12 months later." I agree with the first sentence...this year is the first time when I remember hearing so much about upcoming features (typically vendors time their releases to coordinate with the WritersUA Conference). And I think the third sentence is just logical...customers can only use what exists today. But I don't agree with the second...anyone looking for a HAT now will (hopefully) be comparing existing features, not those that have been announced. When the new features are released, they will then be available for comparison. (Altogether now...duh ;-) ) But the list of new features is, in my opinion, exciting (because it shows just what the vendors are planning on implementing and it shows the different innovations being considered).

Speaking of new features...RoboHelp will support both Windows Vista and Office 2007 in their next release, due out before the end of the year. I also heard today that Frame 8 will go to beta sometime in the next several months, and that a new product (kinda-sorta similar to RoboHelp for Frame) is under development. No news yet on the feature set, but that's OK...I can wait until it's released. (Given that I don't use Frame, I obviously won't be a beta tester!)

Tomorrow is the last day of the conference. I'm going to attend several sessions, and then enjoy dinner with friends before our road trip back to San Diego.

The vendors at the WritersUA Exhibition have been busy! All have been working on new features, and I was allowed to share some of the information yesterday during my session on innovations in Help authoring tools.

Both AuthorIT and Doc-To-Help are working on new versions with updated interfaces that are similar to Microsoft Office 2007's with a ribbon. (It turns out that I'm one of the few who are using Office 2007, and I really like the ribbon.)

Doc-To-Help also announced that they are working on automatic documenter for .NET that works with Microsoft's Sandcastle. The new application will grab the triple comments from Sandcastle to create documentation that can also handle .NET generics.

AuthorIT version 5 will also include publishing profiles. These profiles will control what underlying bits are assigned to a book so that you won't need multiple copies when you want to change the format (for example, if you want to publish both Letter and A4 output, you won't have to use a generic "one size fits all" set of media objects or create multiple books that call the appropriate media objects...the profiles will take care of all that). (Version 4.5 was just released yesterday, with improved localization functionality and new templates for Word and HTML outputs, plus more. And AuthorIT Live, a way to edit content in your database through a browser, is currently in beta.)

WebWorks is working on a new version that will automate DITA publishing by working on top of the DITA toolkit. If you've worked with the DITA toolkit, this new version will make your life much easier. And you'll be able to mix authoring environments (Word, Frame, XML editors).

HelpServer will be incorporating dynamic hyperlink descriptions. They'll use the target topic description to create the hyperlink, and when the description changes, the hyperlink hotspot text will update automatically. They have also worked on a new "assist" application, which uses Java to display "just in time" Help to the user as they work.

Flare has announced several new features over the past few months, like Echo (sound recording), cross-media variables (variables in topics, graphics, and videos that resolve on publication), and image profiles (specifying various publishing settings on the image so that multiple images and conditions aren't necessary). At a dinner Sunday night, they also announced usage reports (for both web-based and local Help files) and a new format for video files (the resulting output is smaller, which means that the output files...like .chms...are also smaller). (And many people are sporting their new shirts these days.)

HelpStudio announced their new widgets, which are powerful snippets that you can use to add various types of content to your Help files. The widgets are coded separately and then called within a topic, where you edit the content itself. And they can be customized to display one way in an online output and another way in a print output...for example, if you insert a drop-down hotspot, you can set all the formatting and the actions for online Help, and then change the design when publishing the same content to Word. It doesn't just become a static version of dynamic content.

Adobe didn't really announce anything new here, although I did hear that a new version will be out way before the end of the year. And the new version will support both Vista and Office 2007.

More news later...now it's time to get to breakfast and the first session!

It's just about that time again...WritersUA starts Sunday with several pre-conference seminars. I'm already in southern California (I wasn't able to get home last Friday from the Microsoft MVP Summit because of the storms on the East Coast, but I was able to get to San Diego on Sunday. Many thanks to Sue Heim for letting me "move in"!).

I'm looking forward to my sessions this year. Brian Walker and I are presenting a session on creating accessible websites, and we've got some great examples of sites that just don't understand what "accessibility" means. And I'm presenting a session on innovations in Help authoring tools, which includes information from the surveys I ran last month. Several vendors provided me with some late-breaking innovations on their HATs that I am really excited to present.

Hope to see you there!

Microsoft has updated knowledge base article 917607, "The Windows Help (WinHlp32.exe) program is no longer included with Windows operating systems starting with Windows Vista".

As many of you know, Vista has been released and, while it does NOT include the WinHelp 32-bit engine, customers who need it can download it from the Microsoft site. This KB article describes the new functionality of the WinHelp engine on Vista, including which macros have been disabled, settings that can be modified to override some of the security settings, and several others. (Does anyone know what "drag-and-drop functionality" was disabled? I wasn't even aware that there was drag-and-drop functionality in WinHelp!)

In my opinion, you should only be using the WinHelp engine for legacy content that doesn't need to be updated. No one should be developing new WinHelp content any longer...the technology is almost 20 years old and it needs to be put to rest.

Earlier today, the Microsoft Help MVPs were given the news...Microsoft has released WinHelp for Windows Vista!

Some notes:

• This release applies to Windows Vista x86 and x64 only, not Longhorn Server.
• Knowledge Base article 917607 will be updated by Monday, 12 March 2007.
• The Windows Help program is not included with any of the Vista operating systems. If you want to view a WinHelp file on Vista, you must download and install the application from the Microsoft Download Center.
• The Windows Help program cannot be distributed.

The Microsoft Help MVPs have been told by Microsoft that the WinHelp Viewer has been delayed, and it will be released as soon as possible (hopefully within the next month).

Both Microsoft and the MVPs are aware that folks are waiting for this release. However, the viewer has to pass Microsoft's QA team first...we all know that there are problems when software is released before it's ready.

Stay tuned for further information...