Helpful Links
WritersUA Conference (www.writersua.com)
WritersUA (formerly Winwriters) produces the biggest and longest-running annual conference for help authors. They have some great articles on the site, too.
HATT List (groups.yahoo.com/group/HATT)
HATT, the Help Authoring Tools and Technology discussion list.
RoboHelp (www.adobe.com/products/robohelp)
RoboHelp has been revived by Adobe. It's the most widely used tool for help authoring and the most common tool used by non-traditional help authors. Version X6 was released in January 2007.
Flare (www.madcapsoftware.com)
Madcap Flare is a RoboHelp competitor formed by former RoboHelp developers. It's based on XML instead of HTML and has strong support for single-sourcing, especially for printed documentation created with Word and Framemaker.
Doc-To-Help (www.componentone.com)
Doc-To-Help still has a loyal group of users. If you have to create Help 2.0 for Visual Studio API documentation, it's worth checking out.
AuthorIT (www.authorit.com)
AuthorIT is a popular object-oriented help authoring tool that gives you the most control of your content. It's as much a content management tool as a help authoring tool. It also works well for companies that need to manage translation of their user assistance.
Captivate (www.adobe.com/products/captivate)
Adobe has released a new version of Captivate (version 2.0) with some great feature enhancements. Captivate (formerly RoboDemo) has become one of the most popular tools for creating inexpensive web-based training and online demonstrations. It's also the main way to create Breeze/Connect learning content.
Camtasia Studio (www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp)
Camtasia Studio is a powerful tool for creating online demonstrations, especially if you're using or editing video.
ISPI (www.ispi.org)
The International Society for Performance Improvement is one of the two main organizations that certifies, educates, and connects instructional designers and trainers. They have a great Certified Performance Technologist program.
ASTD (www.astd.org)
The ASTD used to stand for American Society for Training and Development. Now it just stands for ASTD. They have a great web site at the national level.
ASTD Atlanta Chapter (www.astdatlanta.org)
The ASTD Atlanta chapter is our local chapter.
Technical Writing
Framemaker User's Group (www.frameusers.com)
Discussion group for users of Adobe Framemaker--the most popular tool for creating printed documentation.
Society for Technical Communication (www.stc.org)
The largest professional society for technical writers.
STC Atlanta Chapter (www.stcatlanta.org)
Our local STC chapter.
DITA
Explanation of DITA (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DITA)
Wikipedia's explanation of DITA.
IBM's DITA Site (www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-dita1)
Find out about DITA from the source.
Accessibility (508 Compliance)
Explanation of Section 508 Standards (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_508)
Wikipedia's explanation of what it means to design accessible web sites and online content.
Official Section 508 Website (www.section508.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Content&ID=12)
The Government's Official Section 508 Website, where you can read the actual law.
W3C Site on Accessibility (http://www.w3.org/WAI/)
Find out what the W3C is doing to create accessibility standards for the web.
Graphics
SnagIt for Screenshots (www.techsmith.com)
SnagIt is an easy-to-use, full-featured screen capture utility. It makes it easy to add your own highlights, cropped effects, callouts, and exploded views.
RoboScreen Capture (www.adobe.com)
Adobe has added its own screen capture utility that's integrated with RoboHelp X6.
Madcap Capture (www.madcapsoftware.com/products/utilities/capture/home.aspx)
Madcap has its own screen capture utility that's integrated with Flare 2.0.
SIGCHI (www.hcibib.org/hci-sites)
SIGCHI (Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction) .
UPA (www.upassoc.org)
UPA (Usability Professionals' Association).
STC Usability SIG (www.stcsig.org/usability)
Special interest group for usability in STC.
Usable Web (www.usableweb.com)
Usability information about the World Wide Web.
Usability Research (www.hcibib.org)
Extensive bibilography of human-computer interaction resources.
Jakob Nielsen and Donald Normn's Website (www.useit.com/)
This site has lots of opinions and some helpful guidelines related to usability and web design.
Research Journals
www.techcomm-online.org/cgi-bin/advancedsearch
Search STC's Technical Communication
www.stc.org/search_pubs.html
Search disertation abstracts, Intercom articles, and STC procedings
www.sagepub.co.uk/journals/details/j0177.html
Journal of Business and Technical Communication
www.ieeepcs.org/transactions/search.html
IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
www.acm.org/sigdoc/journal.html
SIGDOC's *Journal of Computer Documentation
www.stcsig.org/oi/hyperviews
HyperViews:Online, the STC Online Information SIG's online newsletter
Copyright 2007. User Assistance Group, Inc. All rights reserved.