This is the first of a series reviews that will cover what is contained in the Adobe Technical Communication Suite 2. Unlike the Adobe Creative Suite, the Technical Communications Suite is geared for technical communicators, help authors, instructional designers and training professionals. The suite contains five products — FrameMaker 9, RoboHelp 8, Captivate 4, Photoshop CS4 and Acrobat Pro Extended. The goal of this series it to define what each product does and provide information of what the new version brings to the table. Please note that some of these products have been reviewed previously and I have provided the links above.
First, let me provide an overview about the Technical Communication Suite 2 in general. This suite is meant to be an end-to-end solution for authoring, reviewing, managing, and publishing technical information and training content. Through the use of interactive 3D models, rich media, multilayered images, demonstrations, and embedded SWF movies, you can create and maintain technical documentation, create user assistances programs, knowledge bases, simulations, software demonstrations, and much more.
What do you need to run Adobe FrameMaker 9?
• 1.0GHz or faster processor
• Microsoft® Windows® XP with Service Pack 2 (Service Pack 3 recommended) or Windows Vista® with Service Pack 1 (certified for 32-bit editions)
• 512MB of RAM (1GB recommended)
• 1.1GB of available hard disk space
• DVD-ROM drive
• 1,024x768 screen resolution
Adobe FrameMaker 9 is a desktop publishing and word processing application that is popular for large documents. Originally created by Frame Technology, FrameMaker was acquired by Adobe in 1995. There had been off and on talk around the industry that Adobe was going to wind down development of the FrameMaker product especially after they ceased support for the product on the Macintosh, but with the release of FrameMaker 8 in 2007, and with the inclusion of the first release of the Technical Communications Suite, it put the end to that rumor.
FrameMaker 9 is a key component in the Technical Communications Suite. It provides the solution for the creation and publication of technical documentation. It combines word processing capabilities and XML-based structured authoring with template-based publishing.
With FrameMaker you can create, edit, and publish content with features for automatic numbering, cross-references, table of content, indexes, books and more. You can work in style tagging word processor mode, or in a fully structured environment optimized for editing and producing valid XML and SGML. You can even manage content entirely in XML, use XSLT during editing, and conform to industry standards such as DITA and DocBook.
Article comments
1 - regis schilken
Your article makes me want to try FrameMaker. Sounds like it will save me a lot of time from my primitive way of organizing and preparing for talks and presentations.
2 - Mike Johnson
Do you know if FrameMaker 9 will run on Windows 7? It's so expensive the average freelancer can afford to buy it once or maybe twice in a lifetime. My copy of FrameMaker 5.5.6 won't even load.
3 - Mark Wickert
It does indeed run under Windows 7. I use it on a Mac using VMware Fusion to host Windows 7. I have also tested it under Parallels Desktop on the Mac. Version 8 runs faster however as version 9 just seems to be more of a memory/processor hog. On a pure PC running Vista, both 8 and 9 run fine.