Synergy/DE Documentation Reimagined

If you’re a Porsche enthusiast, you probably know about the Nürburgring record set a few months back by a 911 GT2 RS, the latest iteration of the Porsche 911 (see the Wikipedia article). Like many, I find it interesting that the best* production sports car in the world isn’t a new design, but the result of continuous improvement and development since its introduction over 50 years ago. One company, Singer Vehicle Design, takes old 911s and resurrects them as carbon fiber kinetic sculptures in the aesthetic of the older 911s, but with performance that matches some of the fastest new 911s from the factory. They describe these as “Reimagined,” and you can see a video about a Singer 911 or visit the Singer website for more information.

Here in the Documentation department at Synergex, we’ve been doing some reimagining of our own. The Synergy/DE documentation has been continually improved over the years, but since 10.3.3c, we’ve published the Synergy/DE documentation with a new format, a new look, and a new set of underlying technologies and practices. The goal: documentation that is quickly updated to reflect product changes and user input, that is increasingly optimized for online viewing, and that is increasingly integrated with other Synergy/DE content. (And soon it will be better integrated with Visual Studio as well; see a recent Ideas post for details.) You can access the doc just about anywhere (even without internet access), it offers better viewing on a range of screen sizes, and it’s poised for further improvements. If you haven’t seen our new “reimagined” doc, check it out at synergex.com/docs.

Here are some of the highlights:

• A better, more responsive UI for an improved experience when viewing documentation from a desktop system, a laptop, or a tablet.
• Technologies that facilitate more frequent updates and allow us to increasingly optimize content for online use.
• Improved navigation features. The Contents tab and search field adapt to small screens, the UI includes buttons that enable you to browse through topics, and a Synergy Errors tab makes it easy to locate error documentation.
• Quick access to URLs for subheadings. To get the URL for a topic or subheading (so you can share it or save it for later), just right-click the chain-link icon next to a heading and copy the link address.
• The ability to print the current topic (without printing the Contents tab, search field, etc.) and to remove highlighting that’s added to topics when you use the search feature.
• Local (offline) access. If you’re going somewhere where internet access is limited, download and install the Local Synergy/DE Product Documentation, which is available on the Windows downloads page for 10.3.3.

See the Quick Tips YouTube video for a brief visual tour of the documentation, and let us know what you think. In the footer for every documentation topic, there is a “Comment on this page” link you can use to send us your input. We look forward to hearing from you!

*Just an opinion!