Adobe FrameMaker Reviews & Product Details

FrameMaker is one of the better dynamic tech writing and authoring tools available. There is a steep earning curve in the beginning, but it becomes more intuitive over time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Some of the features around using images used to annoy me, but it's become easier to use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Adobe Framemaker is a staple tool for many document developers. Framemaker is a versatile solution for many different authoring and publishing needs. Framemaker allows users to create documentation with a tight structure and template-based approach to create uniform documents. Once documentation is written, it is ready to be reviewed with its collaboration capabilities that allow teams to address and review comments on documentation. When the editing process is finished and the team is done collaborating, the file can be tied to Adobe Experience Manager, opentext Documentum, SharePoint, DitaExchange, and many other content management systems. Lastly, there are many different publishing options to deliver content to multiple devices and platforms. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sometimes confused how to link with CMS. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Framemaker is a comprehensive option for technical documentation. The program handles large documents very well and allows you to create online help files from the same source as your print/PDF manuals. The ability to auto-generate tables of content and indices is great. Framemaker also allows you to update the style of your documents easily through the authoring of new templates. You can export the document to many outputs and create crosslinks, internal references, etc. You can create a comprehensive set of variables that allow you to update standardized terms really easily, such as copyright dates and authors. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Unlike the other reviewers on this site, I found the learning curve for Framemaker to be a little steep. And I actually know how to use Photoshop, so I am familiar with Adobe's menu logic. It's difficult to know which menu contains the function you want in Framemaker. When you work on large legacy documents like me that require constant updates, Framemaker can be frustrating. For example, sometimes applying a new template to an old document simply creates broken color definitions in addition to importing new colors. Other times, cross-references are impossible to find, given the number of conditional text layers you can create. And even with reasonable employee turnover, you end up inheriting document files whose invisible formatting is impossible to clean up. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Adobe keeps trying to kill this product, but it’s the only thing out there and it does what it does as well as it does. If you’re writing a book, you can easily set up an automatically generated Table of Contents, easy cross-links, and whatever kind of pagination you want. If you need to write about several similar products, want to hide text describing a feature that hasn’t yet been implemented but will be, need to support multiple versions of the same product, or want to use different paragraphs for printed docs vs online help, FM has conditional text. FM also has support for variables, enabling you to change values ranging from copyright dates to product names to headings in page headers and footers.

You can create graphics using its built-in drawing mode, import graphics (by reference or directly inserted), or a combination of the two. With the latest version of FM, you can also save your output in a variety of formats.

FM also works great for editing XML and DITA books. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It costs $1k per license, and Adobe keeps trying to push its online subscription service, which is cheaper in the short run but pricier in the long run. FrameMaker also only runs on Windows these days. It used to work on several flavors of UNIX and with Mac OS. A lot of us wish Adobe would support Linus and Mac OS X. We writers are stuck using Windows because of Adobe while most of the rest of the company runs either Mac OS X or Linux. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What I like best about Framemaker is its ease of use. As a Senior Technical Writer, I use it with photo editing software and storage software, etc. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I do not have any dislikes for this software. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

FrameMaker facilitates organizing and automating lengthy documents with multiple graphics and is far more robust than Word. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The editing features of Frame are frustrating, because you cannot view the same document with and without markup, as you can in Word. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

This program offers a good structure for text documents. I picked it up cold and began working, slowly, but working. It took some time to figure it out but there are good tutorials and forums to help you out ( I wouldn't count on Adobe). Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like pictures. FrameMaker does not. I can add some but vector based works better. It can take a while to learn the secrets but like other Adobe products, worth learning well. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Framemaker has the capability of XML/DITA Integration which is used industry wide. This also has adaptive screen (responsive HTML5 layouts) and now framemaker also comes with high resolution display compatibility. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The actual working screen size seems to be small comparatively as the menu and other taskbars take up space in the window. Adobe should also make framemaker open to integration with tools from other companies also. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Structured FrameMaker supports conditional content and limited content reuse via text insets. Separating design elements from content enables a small publications team to enforce styles for a distributed team of writers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Conditioned-content and reusability seem like afterthoughts in this products. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Allows for very advanced styling of documents and if you have the time to set it up and discipline on your team to follow consistent processes, it can make creating documents faster. Third party add-ons available in the wild that help automate some processes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Framemaker has become unreliable. Every software has bugs, but when a FrameMaker file becomes corrupted due to one, there's often no recourse because of the binary file type. Using FrameMaker is also very clunky, with very simple, basic formatting options like multiple levels of lists requiring several styles defined. Very easy to have a messy assortment of redundant styles if the team is not incredibly careful to follow exact processes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.