Customer Reviews

RoboHelp HTML Edition 2000, Skills & Drills

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I went out of my way to enter this review, because as I used this book to learn RoboHTML 2000, I often shook my head and thought: this is so well done that I've got to get back to say: Good job! The information is very well organized and laid out. All the steps were well thought out (some typos, but they didn't get in the way). A lot of books, like those 24-hour ones, advertise themselves as teaching you an application, but this book really, truly taught me the application. I'm a tech writer with 12 years experience, and I've got to say that a truly effective book is a wonderful and not common thing. This book exposed me to all the parts of RoboHTML 2000, and made me go through some steps to learn just enough of the various parts so that I'll be able to go back and put the skills to use. NOTE: This book was obviously not written quickly, but is the product of users really learning how to do the tasks. You can tell because the instructions "think of everything." Really, I wasn't left hanging in confusion once. Good job!

I just finished going through this book and must say that I'm pleasantly surprised by how much I learned and how quickly I learned it.

The value of the lessons taught in this book were evident a few days after I completed the last exercise when I created my own project. Went without a hitch.

Top Notch!

As a writer who develops instructional materials, I am always interested in well-written training guides. Unfortunately, this is not one of them.

Siegel's informal style is appreciated, but his terminology is sometimes obscure, confusing and even erroneous. He uses acronyms that aren't defined for his students. For example, in one case he refers to an MRU list without first telling you that he's describing the 'Most recently used file list' in the General tab of the Options dialog box. In another case, he discusses the Project pane and making the view wider or narrower. In one view, the buttons also contain labels and in the narrower view, they turn into icons. In both cases, he refers to them as buttons, which I think is misleading.

I recommend this guide with reservations: There aren't many training guides out there on this subject. If you can't afford training in RoboHelp HTML and need to come up to speed on this application, then you should probably pick this up. Otherwise, go for the in-class training and avoid this book.