Software updates from MadCap

By Paul • Dec 3rd, 2008 • Category: News

Today MadCap announced the release of  version 4.1 of it’s popular Flare help authoring tool. Current Flare users will be prompted to update their installation the next time they launch Flare. If you don’t see the update, you can select Check for Updates from the Help menu.

I can’t find release notes posted to the MadCap Knowledge base yet, but the Flare update prompt lists the following new features:

New in this version:

  • Improved XML Editor performance
  • Improved Handling of tables in all printed outputs
  • Improved FrameMaker and Word import
  • Improved functionality of cross references in all outputs
  • Improvements for native PDF and XPS outputs
  • Fixes for bugs found by users
  • And many other functionality enhancements

The announcement also states that new dot versions are available for X-Edit and Analyzer. You can update them using the same method for updating Flare.

My own upgrade from V4 to V4.1 took my computer about an hour to complete, however this is a fairly slow computer. I’ll be interested to see how my new Vista laptop does for the installation. I also had to upgrade Microsoft SQL Server Compact edition to version 3.5 SP1 when I launched Flare, but that was pretty painless. With both updates, my upgrade took slightly more than an hour to complete.

You can read about this announcement in the MadCap forums, in a post from Rick Ferrell (MadCap Support).

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Paul is is a Certified Flare Instructor, and a MVP in the MadCap forums. He is also the author of the forthcoming book "Frame to Flare" due to be published in Q1 2009. He is married to Christina, and they are the parents of two beautiful children.
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4 Responses »

  1. Technically Speaking » Updates to Flare on December 3rd, 2008 at 6:02 pm:

    [...] MadCap announced an update to Flare today. The new version is Flare 4.1. I’m talking about this in the News section of DocGuy Training. You can read it here. [...]

  2. Greg on December 3rd, 2008 at 6:38 pm:

    http://kb.madcapsoftware.com/Content/Flare/General/GEN1021F_FlareV4.1_Release_Notes.htm

  3. Paul on December 3rd, 2008 at 8:19 pm:

    Thanks for the update, Greg!

  4. Dave Lee on December 4th, 2008 at 4:21 am:

    I think the install time is more to do with your PC than the update, it took about 4 minutes for me.

    Looks like they’ve been busy fixing stuff.

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