Author: admin

With over a decade of experience as a technical writer, I enjoy sharing things that might help other tech writers with problems they might encounter in their professional lives.

Upgrade to RoboHelp 2019, then clean-up your HTML tags!

So, you decided to upgrade to RoboHelp from a previous version. Beautiful. I did, too! And it’s great! Except for all that leftover dirty html! I am very excited by the ability disallow in-line styling, but years of in-line styling by a wide variety of authors has left our project with some very messy html. […]

Fake Memes – The Oxford Comma!

I recently did a presentation at work that included talk about the Oxford Comma. In the presentation, I included some memes to make the presentation a little bit funny, and because funny helps people learn. In my quest for memes I came across this… thing: Let’s talk about this meme. This is just WRONG. First, […]

Pretty print in RoboHelp

I spent a little bit of time trolling around trying to figure out how to use a pretty print-type add-in in RoboHelp. I had a lot of trouble with this, primarily because RoboHelp would de-register the baggage or totally ignore the second style sheet (and delete references to it from topics! After a lot of […]

Chrome vs. RoboHelp HTML5 Responsive Output

So, just a quick post in case this happens to anyone else. Of note: I am using a very customized version of the Charcoal HTML5 responsive layout. I am using RoboHelp 2017. I am using Chrome 63.0.3239.108, 64-bit. So, I noticed I couldn’t search in google chrome, though it worked fine in other browsers. Nothing on the interwebs, […]

Disability Types

Let’s start today’s post off with an overview of the disability types we need to think about when we create accessible documentation. There are five major disability groups that we need to consider when creating documentation: Visual. Visual disabilities include blindness, low-vision, and color-blindness. As writers, our main target is readers, so it only makes […]

WHY ACCESSIBILITY?

A square image with four smaller squares inside, each a white image against a blue field. The images are line drawings of common symbols. Top left is the handicapped symbol, bottom left is the deaf/hard of hearing symbol, bottom right is the blind/visually impaired symbol, and top right is the mental handicapped symbol.

BACKGROUND I’m currently working for a company that manufactures payment terminals, and, due to some interesting events in my life that coincided with this, have been thinking about how my friends and loved ones with disabilities would view my work. Because of the manner of my work, I’m in a unique position to implement accessibility […]

Rarities

When I separated from CWIE Holding Company, I was given permission to use anything that is externally published (KB articles, User Guides, etc..) in my portfolio, but some of the skills and document types that I’d like to showcase in my portfolio are not externally available. Because they have been my only employer for the […]

Using LiveCycle Designer Forms in DocuSign

When creating templates in DocuSign, PDF forms created using LiveCycle Designer do not upload, and do not give an error message. This makes things a little difficult, because LiveCycle forms are just prettier than you standard, every-day forms! No need to fear, though, I have figured out the solution: Create and save the form in […]