Ten years ago, most of these tools would not have been on my list. Only Microsoft Office, WordPress, Acrobat, and Notepad have remained in my toolset over the past ten years. Some bigger names that have fallen off my list over the past few years include RoboHelp, DreamWeaver, FrameMaker, and PaintShop Pro. That is partially due to personal preferences, and largely due to the company I work for and the job I do for them. I haven’t included browsers here, but the short answer is that I use all the major ones for one thing or another but Chrome is my primary.
Confluence is the wiki on which we write and publish most of our documentation at my job. I was part of the team that chose it and launched it at our company. I am also one of the administrators. I have my own cloud version that I use for all of my non-work writing. For the most part, it has replaced word processors as my default when writing. Having it in the cloud means that all of my work, and the interface to develop it with, are available wherever I go and whatever machine I am on.
Our company’s intranet sites are developed using SharePoint. I am the SharePoint administrator for the development and support arm of my company. I spend a lot of time curating content and fixing/redesigning pages.
I not only use Snagit for screenshots, I do most of my image editing using its editor. It isn’t full-featured like Gimp (my other image editing program) but because it has a simple interface, and some nice out-of the box annotation graphics. I use it for most work-related image creation and editing.
I frequently create presentations, usually just a few slides. I also use it for text-heavy image work because it is easy to move elements around on the page.
This is not a common technical writer tool. I support our data dictionaries, which led to me becoming one of two administrators for this tool. I don’t develop data dictionaries from scratch, but I often come in and clean them up for publication. I am the main support person for the tool, so if anyone has trouble publishing their data dictionaries, I come in and troubleshoot the problem.
Every once in a while I need to make a video and this is the program I use. Captivate is actually a little high-end for my purposes, so I end up tripping over some features, but in the end I come out with some nice videos.
If Snagit Editor can’t do the job with an image, Gimp is my fallback. It is much more powerful, but far more complex, which slows me down.
I rarely write from scratch in Microsoft Word, because I have Confluence, but I still get Word documents from other people that I need to edit. I also use it whenever I need to change the capitalization for a large block of words, or if I want to convert text to a table or a table to text.
We report a lot of information in spreadsheets, and Excel is still the best tool for that.
I mainly use this for notes and when I want to remove formatting from a block of text in another program.
This isn’t used for my job often, but I still maintain my personal web sites in WordPress. Occasionally, I also use it to do some quick and dirty HTML editing.
I use this to publish my newsletter. It has a nice, straightforward interface that is almost like sending an email.
Every once in a while, I need to publish or edit a PDF.
My group at work tracks its projects using Jira. We’ve only been at it for a few months, and I am still getting used to the interface, but it does a good job of making my deliverables clear and letting my boss know when I do and do not have time for additional work.
Another group at work is using HP Agile Manager for tracking a single project that I work on. It does the same thing as Jira, and I like the basic interface a little better, but either tool will do the job.
Trello is a much simpler project tracking tool that I use for my own projects. It is quick, easy, and surprisingly powerful if you want to dig a little deeper. I can break out project steps very quickly in Trello, which is something I cannot do quickly in Jira or HP Agile manager.
I could just as easily put this in as a meetings and communication tools, but I put it here because the calendar in Outlook is the first place I go to see what kind of day I am going to have. I use Outlook for email, of course, but the calendar is what keeps me afloat.
I run several meetings and attend far more. GoToMeeting allows me to use both audio and screen sharing.
Lync can do many of the same things as GoToMeeting, but is dependent on other people having the program. I use it more for instant messaging with co-workers and occasionally sharing a screen. Some coworkers run meetings using it.
I can export HTML from Confluence and use it to build web-help files. These are the tools that help me do it.
I use this to rename large blocks of files. This allows me to get rid of special characters in the names that could be problematic for some browsers.
I use this to make edits to large blocks of files. Once I change the names of a block of files using Advanced Renamer, I need to change all the links. TextCrawler also allows me to change headers and footers quickly.
I can create a search engine for a set of HTML files using this program.
If I need to edit HTML for a file, I use Notepad++.
If I need to check for broken links on a web site, I use Xenu.
When you design a user interface, it helps to think in terms of the scenarios…
A writers’ group is a collection of writers who get together to discuss each other’s…
For the past two weeks, I have been fixing FrameMaker document graphics. The problem is that the…
Creating memorable characters is a challenge. It is work to come up with compelling characters…
Building Characters by Brainstorming Character Bio Sheets Several methods to help you create characters Using…
There are very few happy stories in the world. This is not to say that…