About Me and This Site

How it started

When I first started posting answers to posts in the Adobe RoboHelp forums, I found myself repeating previously provided answers. It seemed more sensible to write more complete answers here rather than just providing a minimal reply on the forum. I also needed somewhere to post content for family and friends. Since I started this site, it has grown like Topsy.

Me

Prior to my retirement, I was a technical author living in Guildford, Surrey, UK and working in nearby Cobham for Advanced Business Solutions. During my time there, we produced merged webhelp for two of the main products, merged html help (.chm), AIR Help and an app using Responsive HTML5. We used RoboHelp for this work. Whilst I am now retired, I continue to support the RoboHelp forums, maintain this site and liaise regularly with Adobe to provide feedback.

Prior to getting into the world of technical authoring, I was a bank manager (when people knew how to run banks!). A bit of a contrast. I spent the first twenty years in branch banking and then moved into the Bank's Video Unit producing staff focused programs. After that I got involved in work that led me to specifying the IT requirements for managers whose role was to look after High Net Worth customers. This required me to translate between userspeak and techie speak, which I regard as being one of the technical author's main skills!

Then the bank made large scale redundancies and it made no sense to continue working there given the redundancy package that was on offer. It was a case of take it or be certified mad for not taking it. A couple of contractors who had worked for the bank gave me some work and it all led to my second career and this site.

In July 2005 I was delighted to be made a Team Macromedia Member, since the Adobe takeover we are now known as Adobe Community Professionals. For visitors to the site who are not familiar with what that means, let me explain. It is a recognition by Adobe of the time I spend maintaining this site and answering questions on the Adobe forum for their RoboHelp product. RoboHelp is a software package used to write help files for computer applications. Anyone who has gone into a second career will understand that I went into this thinking it would be something to do for ten to fifteen years after leaving banking. To get such a recognition in a second career is not something you expect and it is very pleasing.

I have been married to Gill for 52 years and have two sons, Richard and Philip, three grand-daughters (Catherine, Sophie and Zara) and a grandson, Oliver.

Donations

If you find the information and tutorials on my site save you time figuring it out for yourself and help improve what you produce, please consider making a small donation.