Press Release on Mimic 2.0

[Richard Ferrell]

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/art ... LAM018.htm


LA JOLLA, Calif., June 9 /PRNewswire/ -- MadCap Software, the leader in multi-channel content authoring and a showcase company for Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft XPS, today announced the availability of Mimic 2.0. MadCap’s native XML, state-of-the-art software simulation application adds new online and print output options, as well as support for MadCap Lingo to facilitate translation.

"Last year, Mimic set a new standard for enriching business communications through Web-based movies," said Anthony Olivier, MadCap Software CEO. "With Mimic 2.0, we’ve raised the bar by making our best-in-class features for simulation, recording, and editing available to the broader range of output formats and languages used by enterprises around the world."

Central to Mimic 2.0 is support for Microsoft Silverlight, the cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET-based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Now content authors and trainers can generate Mimic output in Silverlight to take advantage of the smaller file size for delivering rich Internet content. Additionally, the preloading capability available with Silverlight gives users a more real-time experience.

"Microsoft is very excited with the Silverlight integration that MadCap Software has added to Mimic," said Tim Sneath, group manager for Client Platform Evangelism at Microsoft. "The combination of Silverlight and MadCap Mimic, which takes advantage of the Microsoft .NET Framework, enables a rich, Web-enabled delivery vehicle for eLearning, technical support, online Help, and sales and marketing."

In addition to Silverlight, Mimic can generate online software simulation movies in Mimic’s proprietary movie format, Adobe Flash -- and new to Version 2.0, the Adobe Integrated Runtime, Adobe Air, for rich Internet media. Mimic 2.0 also for the first time can generate print output in the Microsoft XML Print Specification (XPS) and Adobe PDF.

Like all MadCap documentation and authoring solutions, Mimic offers Unicode support for all left-to-right languages, so access to these XML files is especially useful for translating movies into a range of Western and Asian languages. Mimic 2.0 adds integration with MadCap Lingo, the industry’s only fully integrated translation memory system and authoring tool. As a result, users can remain in their Mimic projects while using MadCap Lingo to facilitate translation and preserve important content and formatting.

"The growth in global business is driving the demand for localized content to support the needs of customers, partners and employees, but translating the rich content of simulation movies presents special challenges," said Patricia Dear, product manager for MadCap Mimic. "The integration of Mimic 2.0 with MadCap Lingo helps bring down barriers to localization by simplifying the translation process and eliminating file transfers that lead to errors."