What your colleagues say about the Dr.Explain software What your colleagues say about the Dr.Explain software

Dr. Explain presents an automated approach to creating very comprehensive help files quickly. Dr. Explain captures windows from a live Windows©-based application and creates screenshots as you would expect, but then it analyzes the window content, enumerates the screens, and attaches numbered callouts to all the significant elements.

All captured windows are stored in a single project file. You can group them by modules, and when something changes, you can update individual windows, add new screenshots, and update control references. You don't need to recreate the whole sequence of windows.

With Dr. Explain, you can customize the structure of the menus, screen layout, colors, and callout details. Then you just export the project to HTML. You get instant online help complete with index page, menus, hyperlinked callouts, and professional screens all formatted and ready to upload to your server.

From the December 2005 issue of MSDN Magazine.

Marnie Hutcheson
New Stuff column Editor, MSDN Magazine

Dr.Explain is a help authoring program with a focus on visually describing the Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) of programs. It is an excellent tools for easily creating those "Quick Start" guides that have lots of screenshots of the program and help you learn where everything resides in a program. It is also great for detailed user manuals that document all of the features and options reachable through a program's GUI through highly annotated screenshots. Dr.Explain's well thought-out design and intuitive workflow means even the default configuration produces attractive user-friendly interactive documentation with a minimal amount of fuss.

Read the full review on DonationCoder.com: Dr.Explain Review

Chaim Krause

Dr. Explain is, without question, an awesome piece of software.

The guys behind Dr. Explain have created a simple and powerful problem solver. The problem, of course, is how to quickly create Help Documentation. Their solution is the best I've seen.

So go get it, try it out. You'll see what I mean.

Read the full review on DewDawn.com: Examining The Doctor

Stuart Andrews
Editor, DevDawn.com

Dr. Explain Gives Your Software a Brain

Whether your goal is to sell more software, reduce the burden on your help desk staff, or simply to pave an easier path to adoption for your open-source project, producing and providing excellent help documentation is critically important. Dr. Explain is an incredibly useful tool for this purpose, especially if your help files rely heavily on UI illustrations. Its automatic annotation capabilities perform nearly flawlessly, and cut the time required to generate screenshot-based help topic by several orders of magnitude.

Read the full review on LeeDumond.com: Dr. Explain Gives Your Software a Brain

Lee Dumond
.Net Professional, Developer, Editor & Writer

Software developers have many skills, but a professional design sense isn't always one of them. Even developers who know good design don't often have much practice with InDesign or similar programs, so any sort of layout project--like creating software documentation--can be tremendously time-consuming. Dr. Explain can help, and this app just received a couple dozen improvements and fixes to bring it up to version 2.6.

Dr. Explain can save you countless hours of copying, pasting, linking, and other design busywork by automatically capturing screens from your software, then generating interactive screenshots complete with callouts and links for all your window controls. All you have to do is flesh it out with some descriptive text to create final help files, whether it's CHM, HTML, or printable docs.

From the July 18, 2007 issue of CNet Download Dispatch Newsletter.

Paul Hughes
CNet Download Dispatch Newsletter

Technical writers will really appreciate how much work this program does for them, and developers will undoubtedly find this a useful tool in identifying opportunities to improve their programs. The price sounds a little high, but I can assure you that the product will easily pay for itself on the first project.

Read the full review on Free-Downloads.net: Dr.Explain Review

Charles Akin

If you're just wrapping up development on a piece of software and you're dreading the process of generating help documentation, have no fear: just visit the doctor. Dr.Explain is a cleverly designed help tool that - unlike a flesh-and-blood doctor - can promise quick and completely painless assistance.

Give it a window capture from your application, and it will automatically generate a GUI-based sequence of callouts for every control on the screen, which you can then author in HTML, CHM, or RTF to integrate into your app or Web site.

From the August 9, 2006 issue of CNet Download Dispatch Newsletter.

Paul Hughes
Contributing Editor, CNET Download.com

With Dr.Explain, the job of creating manuals can just as easily become a pleasure. Here you will not have to learn HTML or editors of all kinds for formatting help pages - creating a help article in Dr.Explain is not any harder than composing a letter to a friend using your favorite word processor. Even screenshots can be captured and pasted to the text automatically, according to your predefined rules or by hitting the "magic" keyboard shortcut.

Read the full review on 3D2F.com: Dr.Explain: User Guides Done Right

3D2F.com Smart Reviews Editor

For me, Dr. Explain has presented a new approach to documentation, providing a framework in which every item on a window demands an explanation, or a good reason why it doesn't require one. It almost marshals the user into considering every detail of an application which should be explained to the user. I have found it easy and ergonomic to use, and have found it a productive tool.

The Developers Group Magazine, February/March 2009

Neville W Richards
Editor

If you are like me, creating software is often the most enjoyable thing about being an independent software vendor. However, two less enjoyable parts of the business also happen to be very important: 1) marketing and 2) software documentation. Dr. Explain makes the creation of documentation easier - and almost enjoyable.

Dr. Explain is worthy of your investigation for (at least) two reasons: 1) it is very affordably priced and 2) it is very easy (fun?) to use.

If you haven't already discovered Dr. Explain then I strongly recommend you check it out. Tell the Doctor I sent you! :-)

Read the full review on DeveloperReviewed.com: Dr Explain - A Good Prescription for Documenting Software

Dennis Baggott
Editor, DeveloperReviewed.com

Dr.Explain from Indigo Byte Systems is a Help-authoring tool for rapid creation of Help files and user guides. It is designed for software developers, ISV, micro ISV, and technical writers, and includes auto-capture and annotation technology that allows you to document your software interfaces easily. Dr.Explain parses a live application and automatically produces screenshots of its windows, along with a sequence of callouts for each window control. You only have to add some description to each callout as needed. Dr.Explain can output the results as a set of HTML pages, a CHM Help file, or a rich-text format document. The results include screenshots, cross-references, menus, and an index page ...

Visual Studio Magazine, September issue, 2006

Very nice job! Great example of meeting an unmet need that has been around for years.

Bob Walsh.
47 Hats. The author of "Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality" book

I think you are onto an excellent product here and I've said so in the newsgroup. That's the good stuff. Dr.Explain, as I have mentioned before I think it is a great product.

Phill Hellewell
P&M Software. Member of the Association of Independent Software Industry Professionals (AISIP)

The new version is a big improvement - good work!

Nick Hebb
BreezeTree Software, LLC

We are using Dr.Explain to produce CHM help, product documentation and to incorporate Web based html for a very large enterprise application. The tools and features within Dr. Explain have definitely made the job much simpler. Besides having a great product, the people at Dr. Explain have shown exceptional cooperation for incorporating ideas asked for by end users. This has increased our satisfaction with the decision to use Dr. Explain in our enterprise product development.

James Neill, VP
Accelerated Design, Inc.

Last night I was working with the trial version of Dr. Explain. I was impressed. I bought and registered the software.

Terry Jepson
WISCO Computing

Also might I say, this is a great program that solves many needs for businesses today. Once we get our documentation done, I'm probably going to turn around and purchase the whole package for the company. Thanks again and Great Work!

Robert Connely IV. Grid Engineer
Novo Innovations, Inc.

Dr Explain made generating the help files a pleasure rather than a chore.

Dr. Phil Brierley
Tiberius Data Mining

After months making excuses not to create html help I started the work using Dr Explain. Help in html format, chm format and a user manual were all ready within a few days.

Steve Wolstenholme
Neural Planner Software Ltd

I have to say I'm very impressed with Dr. Explain. Thank you all for developing a great product, and especially for making available the absolute best tool of its class.

Alexander A. Kardailsky
Astersoft Co. Ltd. Member of the Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP)

I chose Dr.Explain as our primary tool for documenting a large enterprise business system. The results have been fabulous.

The interface allows is to develop with blinding speed, which is especially helpful being downstream of an agile development process. In a little over a year, we have developed hundreds of help file topics, equating to thousands of printed pages.

Having four outputs gives us plenty of deployment options. We use the CHM file for integrated form level help. The HTML output builds a web site that can be deployed anywhere. Users like the RTF file because they can cut out the pages they need and print them for training. The PDF is popular because it renders beautifully with bookmarks and working hyperlinks. Our customers are very happy with the results.

Finally, Dr.Explain has been continually upgraded and improved, and they have responded very quickly when we needed support or had questions.

Given the speed of development, the multiple outputs, and the excellent support, I think it's the best choice out there.

Ladd May
MBS Dev, Inc.

Just want to say a HUGE thank you for your awesome product.

The latest feature to import from an old HLP file has made my job of updating the help file to current technology a LOT easier. The import was fast and accurate.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!


Ian Cook
Kirby Software

Using Dr. Explain we were able to quickly and easily port over our old linear documentation to a much more user friendly GUI based help resource.

Chris Truxaw
CT Developing

We have successfully used your Dr.Explain program for our help file and also for some of the pages on the web. Great program! Please let me add that Dr.Explain really has cut the job of explaining the user interface of ViceVersa by half (at least) and produced a very professional output.

Director
TGRMN Software

We have found Drexplain to be an excellent product - help files are now (almost) fun rather than being a tedious chore. All stages of help file construction are smooth and intuitive and the resultant help files look great. The time savings gained over coventional help authoring systems is considerable.

Murray Gillespie
Lygil Software

I really like Dr.Explain. It's helped me to prepare software documentation fast and without exhausting text and image formatting.

Andrei Kharin
Xpress Software Inc.

I don't want to do complicated works to create a help file in our projects before I found Dr.Explan.

William Chan
TacoTech Software Co.

Wow what a great product.
Over the years I have used many help authoring systems with almost too many features to name. What I found out is that a lot of these features didn't stand the test of time or where hard to implement so I always ended up not using them. I've used Robo... for years and got sick of their extortion about 3 years ago.

Dr. Explain has a simple intuitive interface and produces documentation from the applications screen shot which makes a lot more sense than cutting and pasting images in a descriptive text document. By recognizing individual controls on a screen and letting you edit the pointers and text for each item you can get the job done a lot faster.

It also has no dependancy on the version of your Word Processor like some other products I've used. Very impressive piece of software!

Michael Lawson
Farpoint Solutions / Secure Design Technologies

Great product getting even better! Dr. Explain is a great tool!

Tom Bodine
Bodine Training Games LLC

Briljant piece of software!!

Daniel Nikolic
DNC-IT

I like the product and it's simplicity. Keep on going with the good works!

Bram Klootwijk
Datatrieve Software b.v.

Seriously, thanks for a great product. It helped me look good to the people I work for. Best wishes on your continued sucess!

Mark Jerde

Thumbs up! Good luck!

Patrick McKenzie
"MicroISV on a Shoestring" blogger

Very cool app!

Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc

Good job pal. I like your tool.


Ali
phpLazy.com

Dr.Explain is just GREAT! It helps to create amazingly neat and easy-to-read documentation in just a couple of clicks.

We have been using many help authoring for our products, but Dr.Explain's intuitive interface and great results it produces beat'em all. Guys, you've got a savvy designer, and you understand both developers' & users' needs to an immense extent. Since now your software is the only solution responsible for creating all the documentation for our numerous products.

I just can't thank you enough. I would HIGHLY recommend your product to every developer who cares about his product.
Keep up the good work!

Viktar Khamianok
Link-Assistant.com

I just want to say, your product is a god-send. It is a real time-saver and the result it produces is very professional. Keep up the good work!

Len White
Active Java, LLC

Your software was exactly what I was looking for when creating API documentation internally. Now if I want to change the HTML around it I can update the template, and re-generate. Damn that is sweet. I remember when you talked about this software about a year...or maybe two years ago and I was going to get it...then I forgot about it. This will save me tons and tons of time.
Thanks for a great product.

Steve Wiseman
IntelliNavigator, Inc

We started using Dr.Explain for our online and application help files because it allows us to do all our documentation requirements in one place.

James Hall
Cypress Technologies

Dr. Explain is a great tool! They have clearly put a lot of thought and work into this product. It is very rare these days to find software that just "works the way it should" - but Dr Explain is such a tool. Thanks for making such a great product!

Director
JetTask Software

I love Dr.Explain by the way. Keep up the great work.

Brian Bakkebo
Right Away Mortgage

Just a few words about us - we are a hospice providing palliative care service in the north of New Zealand. We have an inpatient unit for up to eight patients but most of the hundred or so patients we care for at any given time are looked after mainly in their own home by our community based nurses. As well as offering our own service we also act as a referral centre for 3 other palliative care services in our region.

About 15 months ago we began using electronic patient notes which are internet based, to allow for a real time interactive approach to clinical care for our patients. This is the first project in New Zealand using an internet based database. We work with a provider in Australia but have had to adapt the programme to meet our needs.

I was asked to write a User Manual for the new system. Having never done that before I looked at several programmes and found Dr.Explain not only very easy to use, but the answers from the HelpDesk were always very prompt, helpful, supportive and the staff were open to new suggestions. It was a delight to work with you guys and I compliment you on your professional capability and client service.


Walter Nasarek, Clinical Resource and IT Nurse
North Haven Hospice (New Zeland)

Dr. Explain is perfect! It's really intuitive and it let me save so much time. The final product looks great and for all of those reasons I will continue to use it for a long time!

Vincent Trepanier
Vinity Soft

This is the best of any of the companies I deal with in cooperation with customers!!! Dr. Explain is most open to customers suggestions and implements those ideas in a timely and thoughtful way.

C. Chambers
C. Chambers LLC

No matter how intuitive, help must only be a click away, easy to find and simple to understand. We chose Dr. Explain for it's ease of use and great end product layout for all our help needs - chm, html and pdf.

Glen Harvy
Aquarius Communications

Dr. Explain saved us many hours and allowed us to create help for our service in a very structured way. We found Dr Explain very intuitive and we would highly recommend it to anybody who needs to document their product and deploy it on the Internet, within an application or into a word processing document.

Darren Stoppler
Stoppler Solutions Inc.

It's always good to know that not only when you buy a product like this you are getting a very useful tool that helps simply and speed up a process that could be so terrible in the time and complexity, but that there are people (like Dennis) who offer such speedy and helpful support (thanks again Dennis).

Richard Northcott
Visionscape

We have decided to purchase and use Dr Explain. I think I've spent countless hours making numbered callouts over the past years, and the fact that those are integrated into the help interface is very worthwhile.

Ben Zimmer
Enable Training and Consulting, Inc

I purchased DR.Explain to document an application I wrote for a client and have just finished the help system and have to say your product is just amazing. As a programmer I can appreciate the thought and effort that has gone into making this software.

It took me a couple of days to figure it all out, and now I can''t imagine using anything else for a help system. The relatively simple interface hides the fact that the software is very powerful because it does most of the work for me when it captures the screens in such detail. It is so simple and quick to use and the graphics are excellent.

The fact that I can produce the help in so many formats makes my job so much easier, especially the RTF option to produce a printed copy.

One year later:

I have just gone back to an old software project and revised it, so of course I had to update the help screens.

The ability of DR.Explain to paste a new screen capture over the top of the existing one, without destroying any of the underlying information is just brilliant and I think is a feature of your software that you could highlight more to developers, as it saves so much effort when you go back to an existing help project.

Al Sterritt
AC Computer Services

I have used Dr. Explain to create the help file.  It is very intuitive and helps in building the help documentation swiftly.  I have upgraded to Ver 4.x.  The new version is awesome.
This software is recommended for anyone who wants to build an intuitive help file in less time with screen shots of their software in the help file.

V J Reddy
Personal

Generating help has always been a chore, especially the annotation of screenshots which I like to include for clarity.

Dr.Explain just blew that away.  Annotated screenshots are now a snap.

And that's just one feature! Add in all the other features and a very short product learning curve and you have THE indispensable help authoring tool.

For StokePlay Pro I evaluated Dr.Explain for around 2hrs before purchasing a license.  When it came to building the help files for real I had working documents, full of content, within a few hours.  AND the same files were exported as HTML and uploaded straight to StrokePlay Pro website.

The license price?  It paid for itself, in time savings, on the first day I started to use it.

Patrick Byrne, Developer - StrokePlay Pro
Byrne Consultancy Limited

Your company has a good product. It is easy to use and produces a great
help system. I was dreading the thought of creating help for my product a week
ago when I downloaded Dr. Explain to give it a test but now the end is in
sight. I can't believe how quickly I have put together comprehensive help
for my EditToPublish program. And here's the best part--as good as the
product is, the support is even better. Congratulations to everyone involved
with the development and support of Dr. Explain.

Mike Smith, President
Book & Software Publishing Corporation, Inc.

We've worked really hard to make LinxCRM a world-class CRM system but we needed a world-class Help system to match. We did a lot of research and testing and found Dr Explain gave us ease-of-use with a great result.
We like to use a lot of screenshots and it's just so easy to grab a shot and annotate it. And because we upgrade our software regularly we often need to replace a lot of screenshots, which is a breeze using Dr Explain.
Incorporating HTML where needed is useful and we even use video. We simply created some template pages and used them over and over for a consistent look and even added some custom bullet points.

The excellent backup support that came with Dr Explain, although rarely needed, has been an unexpected bonus.

Highly recommended!


Chris Mills, CEO
Linx Software, Australia

Great tool, saves lots of work. Bought full version and I am happy like a little kid :)

Thnx Guys

Mark
Monolith Electronic Company PTY LTD - AU

This is a great program and it has saved me a massive amount of time, and its producing fantastic results.

Jim Cockram, Technical Director
Copernicus Technology Ltd