MadCap Flare is packed with features and has been designed to give technical writers, content authors and documentation specialists a versatile XML-based authoring and publishing solution. Flare’s intuitive user interface allows users to easily create and manage content, import legacy authoring projects, and publish to a wide variety of sources, all from a single source document. MadCap Software is passionate about its users, and strives to provide all of the features you have come to expect in a high-end, authoring and publishing system, including:

Topic-based Content Development

Author in structured topic-based content development for powerful, sophisticated information delivery

Maximum Content Reuse

Easily create, manage and reuse content with conditional text, variables, snippets, outlines, and more

XML Flexibility And CSS Design

Enjoy flexibility with XML (extensible markup language) and control the look and style of your content with CSS
(cascading style sheets)

Global Project Linking

Share and update common elements across multiple projects

Product Integration

• MadCap Flare allows for seamless integration across MadCap Software’s entire line of software applications.
• MadCap Feedback Server provides user feedback and reporting
• MadCap Analyzer scans and analyzes your project for suggestions to improve your project efficiency and consistency
• MadCap Mimic, Capture, and Echo provide powerful multimedia publishing integration for your projects
• MadCap Lingo enables translation and localization
• Contribute content using MadCap X-Edit Contribute and/or insert comments using MadCap X-Edit Review

Import Existing Content

• Adobe FrameMaker (.fm, .mif, .book)
• Microsoft Word
• HTML/XHTML
• RoboHelp projects
• HTML Help projects
• DITA

Generate Multiple Outputs

• Cross-browser, cross-platform Help (WebHelp or WebHelp Plus)
• Microsoft HTML Help (.chm)
• Help for .NET applications or Windows Vista/Windows7 (DotNet Help)
• Adobe FrameMaker (.fm, .mif, .book)
• Direct PDF (no need for Adobe Distiller or Word 2007)
• Microsoft Word (.xml, .doc)
• Direct XPS and DOCX
• WebHelp AIR (Direct Adobe AIR integration)
• Pure XHTML
• DITA
• Mobile (iPhone, Microsoft Mobile, Palm Web OS, BlackBerry and Android)

Print-Based Output Features

• Choose between Print and Web layout views
• Page layouts
• Context-sensitive cross-references
• Footnotes
• Topic preview for print-based output types
• Generate headings in output based on TOC structure
• Heading variables (easily insert heading variables, glossary terms, and index terms)
• Hyphenation control
• Mini-TOC for a single chapter or section
• Short line elimination
• Widow and orphan control
• Zoom/scale pages
• Page breaks on table rows
• Image resizing with aspect ratio maintained

Power and Flexibility

• Advanced reporting with Analyzer (over 20 projectspecific reports)
• ASPX, HTML, and other custom file extensions for WebHelp output
• Enhanced Indexing (including index links and auto-indexes, which let you automatically add words and phrases in your project to a generated index)
• Image file format support including .xps, .xaml, .wmf, and .emf
• Context-sensitive Help testing (now available for DotNet Help)
• Wildcard search support for DotNet Help

Team Collaboration

• Incorporate document contributions from others
• Send topics out for review and accept or reject changes
• Incorporate/transfer review comments (annotations) into topics
• Contribution templates (contributors use elements and formatting you want)
• Locks (choose areas of content that reviewers can and cannot edit)

Multi-Language Support

• Fully Unicode enabled
• Double-byte and Asian language support
• Language support for Eastern European languages
• Seamless integration with MadCap Lingo for easy localization

Single-Sourcing Features

• Generate multiple targets from one project
• Variables and Snippets (re-usable text and content)
• Single-sourcing of images
• Conditional text (at all levels)
• Style sheets for topics and tables
• Easily synchronize with Word™ or FrameMaker® documents
• Global Project Linking — share and update common elements across multiple projects
• Master style sheets
• Master TOC at project level

Ease of Use

• Auto-numbering
• Visual document structure display
• View and edit multiple docs simultaneously
• Command line compiling
• Drag-and-drop table columns and rows
• View, filter, and access all files from a single list
• Disable styles that you do not use
• IntelliSense for matching text, frequent phrases, and variables
• Zip and email projects
• Project toolbar for easy access to common tasks
• Style pick window (quick way to apply styles)
• Open files by dragging from Windows to Flare
• Insert snippets by dragging from Content Explorer

Server

• Integration with industry source control systems that use the MS SCC API interface
• Faster server-side search
• Searching of non-XHTML content (Word documents, PDF files, etc.)
• Automatic runtime merging of projects without any in-project work