Suppose you need to quickly develop user documentation in various formats for your software product. What you likely want: - Quick start - Less tedious work and more automation - Generate multiple formats from a single project - No extra programming - Fast updates and efficient reuse - Better teamwork Dr.Explain 5 is a solution

1. Rapid development of help files &
user documentation in Dr.Explain 5.0
Dennis Crane
Indigo Byte Systems, LLC
October 31, 2014

2. Who we are and what's happening?
We've been developing various software to
support IT products since 2004
We help technical writers, engineers, software
developers, trainers, and IT support teams
We hate boring work, cognitive dissonances, rich
user interfaces, and other disgusting things
We use automation, minimalism, templates,
common sense, and strange humor
Our tool is: Dr.Explain
Let's get acquainted

3. My Precious
Dr.Explain is a software for rapid
development of user documentation
Features
• Automatic annotations for the user interfaces
• Total minimalism (no excessive clicks)
• All inclusive
Thousands of users across the globe
• create help files for software and technical systems
• create online help systems
• create printed manuals and guides
Let's get acquainted

4. Let’s dream
Suppose you need to quickly develop user
documentation in various formats for your
software product
What you likely want
• Quick start
• Less tedious work and more automation
• Generate multiple formats from a single project
• No extra programming
• Fast updates and efficient reuse
• Better teamwork
Let's get acquainted

5. Dreams come true
Quick Start
Easy installation. UI in 10 languages!
Get
ready!
Get set! Go!
www.drexplain.com

6. Dreams come true
Quick Start
Sample project
• Available in the start dialog at
launch
• This is a user documentation for a
real software called TBS Cover Editor
• You can preview the output literally
in two clicks
• Contains items of various types
• Allows you to quickly see how
changes in the settings influence the
output

7. Dreams come true
Quick start
Total minimalism (no excessive clicks)
• The most important functions are always at hand
• Flexible settings under the hood
• Minimum number of clicks and mouse wheel runs
• 1-click preview even for PDFs!
• Hotkeys for frequently used commands

8. Dreams come true
Quick start
Import your legacy documentation in various formats
What you can import:
• Legacy help files
• MS Word and RTF documents
• Individual text files
• File catalogs
• Supports all charsets
• Automatically generates a table of
contents in a project
• Reproduces formatting of imported
documents as exact as possible

9. Dreams come true
Quick start
Very liberal free version
• Watermarks on all images
• No time limits or reduced
functionality
• No project size limits
• Free end-to-end preparation of the
ready-to-use documentation
• No need to rework projects after
registration

10. Dreams come true
Forget about boring work. Automate it!
New project template
Pre-configured and ready-to-use
• Cover
• Dynamic table of contents
• First section
• Optimized language settings
• Automatic names for files
• Optimized project export
settings

11. Dreams come true
Forget about boring work. Automate it!
Automated documenting of the user interfaces
The software makes a screenshot, analyzes the structure of the window and then
automatically generates an image containing notes and explanatory tags
Recognizes and annotates:
• Software dialogs
• Menus and submenus
• Web pages
• Java UI applications (SWING)
• Flash applications (SWF)

12. Dreams come true
Forget about boring work. Automate it!
Text variables
Quick insertion of duplicating
text fragments
Bulk replacement of all
matches

13. Dreams come true
Forget about boring work. Automate it!
HTML and special objects in the editor
Use the HTML object to:
• Add a dynamic or a JavaScript
content into your online manuals
• Embed a complex item into a text
of a section
• Insert custom tags
• Fine-tune various items and their
behavior

14. Dreams come true
Forget about boring work. Automate it!
Section statuses and progress indicators in a project

15. Dreams come true
Forget about boring work. Automate it!
Automatic publishing of online manuals once they're exported
Publish on any website
through FTP
Publish on the cloud
platform Tiwri.com

16. Dreams come true
Forget about boring work. Automate it!
And…
Automatic indexing for quick search
Checking projects for integrity, consistency,
completeness and errors
Allocation of Help IDs for creating context-sensitive
help files
Command line mode for automatic releases and
bulk processing
…and much more

17. Dreams come true
Multiple formats, single solution…
From tiny help files to large printed user manuals
What you can create from a
single project:
• Online manuals with
integrated searchbox and
custom layout
• Software help files
• Large printed manuals in PDF
or RTF with a cover, table of
contents and full support of
national encodings

18. Dreams come true
Cannot into programming? Forget!
Full-text search in online manuals
• Automatic indexing for
quick search
• Highlighting of results
• No database required
• No custom scripts
required
• Works even on a free-of-charge
hosting

19. Dreams come true
Cannot into programming? Forget!
Integrate your documentation into your corporate website
• Full integration of
documentation into websites
• Custom page layouts
• Built-in WYSIWYG editor for
headers, footers and side
panels
• Custom sections in HTML
documents
• Insertion of arbitrary program
code in headers, footers and
side panels

20. Dreams come true
Cannot into programming? Forget!
Customize the visual appearance
• Adjust your documentation
to a corporate style
• Choose from the standard
set of color schemes
• Customize a color scheme
in the built-in WYSIWYG
editor
• Fine-tuning with CSS

21. Dreams come true
Reuse and updates
Quick replacement of screenshots
Replace screenshots in
the annotated images
without losing any
notes
Rapid documentation
updates for each new
release of your software
product

22. Dreams come true
Reuse and updates
Copy and move sections as you want
You can cut an entire subtree
in the hierarchy and insert it
into another document
• Makes it easier to reuse the
existing content
• Allows you to work separately
with various parts of your
documentation and then
seamlessly merge them into a final
document

23. Dreams come true
Teamwork & Collaboration
Tiwri.com is a cloud platform that lets multiple users jointly
develop technical, reference, or user documentation using
Dr.Explain 5 as an editor application.

24. And the last one…
Looking into the future
Roadmap…
Enhance collaboration and teamwork
on tiwri.com
Improve the editor
Automate even more things
Create a thin web-based editor
Add support of multiple languages
within a single project

25. Need for Dr.Explain 5?
Current user of Dr.Explain v.1 – v.4?
Check your upgrade options at
http://www.drexplain.com/v5updates/

26. Install, run and have a good time!
www.drexplain.com
Any questions? Feel free to e-mail me:
Dennis Crane
info@drexplain.com