MadCap Flare

This was the third software I tried for the purpose of creating help guides and tutorials more efficiently recently. My first impression was that it was quite a lot more user friendly than both of the others. The interface resembles many softwares I've used in the past for other purposes. The icons are familiar and easy to work with. It includes HTML5 formatting which is much better suited to having search engines index your work which is definitely part of the project. And of course enables content to be displayed in a responsive and adaptive way across all mobile devices, laptops and desktops which is key. You can utilize the older XML Web Help format which I appreciate. There is a support for CSS3 which is consistent with on of the other softwares adding more flexibility. I like the slideshow feature for use with video and images. The slideshow would perhaps minimize the need for popups, togglers and dropdown menus and make the overall experience by readers much more visual and easier to focus on the content at hand. You can export projects including outputs, file tags and conditions easily in a zip file which is important to note.

There is a learning curve with all authoring tools I've used and for good reason. However, this is the easiest of the bunch to learn quickly in my opinion. The search and replace function could cause you to make changes to your content globally and is just something to be aware of in my opinion. And the pricing is middle of the pack so far, that is to say not the most expensive and the lowest either. This may be a good thing because the valuable feature set combined with the ease of use make it a worthy consideration.

There are ton more features than mentioned above and it will take some time to become completely adept using this tool. But it is the simplest of the professional authoring tools I've used thus far and while I haven't made my final choice as of yet. Based on the value in their features and the relative user friendly nature of the software it is currently the front runner and I recommend trying it out during your research. I appreciate the free trial which you can customize and download according to your specific needs with no credit card required.