Advanced and Unfamiliar Features in MadCap Flare 8: What the Heck Does That Do?

MadCap Flare is one of the leading help authoring tools on the market. Its features range from straightforward ones used to create topics, to an almost overwhelmingly powerful stylesheet editor, to features like support for HTML5 and the DOCTYPE that have strategic implications and may be unfamiliar to many help authors. As useful as these features are, they can also be confusing, especially for authors who are self-taught and find themselves swamped with unfamiliar or advanced options. This book addresses forty of these often unfamiliar or advanced options. The book is based on questions that accumulated during seven years of consulting and training as a MadCap-certified Flare trainer and consultant (and almost twenty more working with help and web authoring tools and coding before Flare). The book covers such issues as: • DOCTYPE specification and its relationship to strict vs. quirks modes in browsers. • Strategic impact of HTML5. • Float feature for image positioning. • Master pages vs. page layouts. • That mysterious “unbind” feature. • The effect of the Source Styles options when importing Word documents. • And more… Each discussion stands alone, so just scan the table of contents to see what looks interesting. The book will also be updated periodically to reflect changes in new versions of Flare.