Which FMaker version?

[Steve Rickaby]

At 02:04 +0000 12/8/11, visualbistro at comcast.net wrote:

>What are the general thoughts from this "community?" What are the PROs and CONs? What should I recommend? We are a small startup business (check out <http://www.agilyx.com>www.agilyx.com), and have to keep an eye on the budget, but we want to create professional results in everything we do.

As Peter suggested, older version would only be occasionally available from the likes of eBay. However, I went to FrameMaker 7 on Mac via that route and it gave me no problems. At some point I will try to go to v 8 for Windows via the same route, when I upgrade my main Mac to one of the Intel-based models.

I have no direct experience of versions after 7, but others have said they prefer FrameMaker 8. v 9 introduced the new Adobe-style palette-based UI, to general derision, but DITA support got better across 8 -> 9 -> 10. Conditional text was improved significantly with one of the version later than 7 to allow the use of Boolean conditions, but I'm not sure whether those came in with v 8 or v 9.

If you don't need DITA/structure, consider looking for a second-hand full copy of FrameMaker 8, but see what other opinions you get.

-- 
Steve