Given how ubiquitous Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver have become, it can be easy to forget that Adobe has other offerings. If you create live presentations of your work, interactive training pieces, knowledge bases for your colleagues, or if you conduct web conferences with clients, some of these lesser-known tools are worth a look. Here’s a peek at what each one does.

Acrobat Connect Professional combines what was formerly the Macromedia Breeze product with VoIP and other features to create a web conferencing application. With Connect Professional, a user can easily create a conference room with video, audio, chat and polling capabilities. There’s also a large content area in which one can present slides and images created in other applications including Adobe Presenter, which comes with the package. Conferences are available via the Flash Player, so no additional software is required for playback. Compared to the rather complex Microsoft LiveMeeting, preparing a conference with Connect Professional is a no brainer, especially if you use the templates.

The demo at the Adobe site will to give you a sense of how the Connect web conferences look both and operate.

Captivate, another former Macromedia product, can be used to create interactive online learning tools such as quizzes, simulations and scenarios, even podcasts. Educational modules can be built using simple templates, and you can also record screen movements if a visual demonstration is necessary. This app is probably is probably more than you need if you’re just teaching some basic tasks to a few people, but if you’re e-learning needs are extensive or complex, Captivate can help you create some pretty robust interactive features.

RoboHelp is a bizarre name for a program that is used to build searchable, indexed knowledge bases, and most small-time and freelance designers will have little use for this app. But web developers and technical teams will appreciate its time saving capabilities and organizing principles. Creating quality documentation is and always will be a time consuming task, and RoboHelp is certainly no panacea. It’s not cheap either, but it does demonstrate Adobe’s enduring commitment to communication as well as design.

Captivate and RoboHelp are just a few of the apps included in the Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite, which also features a word processing program for technical writers called FrameMaker. Adobe Acrobat 3D also comes with the package, and it will appeal to the technically inclined because it can make CAD drawings into 3D PDF files.

Speaking of Acrobat, I should mention that it and the other more familiar Adobe products can often be used to perform the most common presentation, collaboration and documentation tasks. Look to specialized apps like Connect Professional, Captivate and RoboHelp only when conferencing, e-learning or technical documentation constitute the bulk of your work or when more efficient applications can save you loads of time and money in the long run.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 2:40 pm and is filed under RESOURCES. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.