Adobe FrameMaker 12 Offers Exciting New Publishing Options

I’ve recently sat in a 2-hour webinar hosted by Adobe on the new Adobe FrameMaker 12.
I really liked what I saw and will upgrade to it soon by taking advantage of Adobe’s great limited-time offer to existing registered FM customers: now for only $29.99 a month you can subscribe (online) to the whole TCS5 (Technical Communication Suite), an amount less than you would pay if you purchased FM12 alone as a separate product. Considering that TCS comes with Illustrator, Captivate, RoboHelp, Acrobat, and other goodies, it’s a deal hard to resist for techies like me.
But enough of the sales talk. Let me quickly list the major stuff that I really loved about FM12:
(1)   The ability to publish in 6 great formats straight from inside FM (no need to import everything to RoboHelp first) is a major improvement.
Now by selecting the  File > Publish menu option you can publish to any or all of the following formats: PDF, HTML5, Web Help, ePub, regular HTML help (CHM), and Amazon Kindle.
“What about RoboHelp?” you may ask. RH can still publish into 17 formats, 11 more than covered by FM12. So if you have any esoteric publishing needs, the powerful RH is still available as part of TCS5.
(2)   Much improved PDF reviews. You can still import PDF comments back to FM source files but the whole functionality got smarter now. If you add text or make any changes to the source file, FM12 still remembers where to insert the comments/changes back in the source file. This means you do not need to wait for the PDF comments turn in to continue working on your source file.
Oh, by the way, your SMEs can review the document even on their smartphones mobile pads. Cool.
(3)   Option to use larger and colorful icons, yes! It was time we had an option other than those tiny little drab gray buttons and icons. These new icons look even better on laptops.
I’ll mention other changes to FM12 in another post. This is a great upgrade worthy of your attention. Well done, Adobe!