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I am looking for a program to make mockup screenshots with. I first found out I could do it with Visual Basic (uglier names I have yet to hear a programming language being called) from joelonsoftware.com. I don't want to start learning VB now, especially since I am still in the process of learning Java. I then found mockupscreens.com, with the searchstring "how to make mockup screenshots". But seeing as I am going to use this program quite infrequently, I don't think paying $80 for it is worth it.
The mockups I'd like to do would be mainly for Windows XP (perhaps also for GNOME, KDE and Mac OSX, but these are not top-priority).
Edit: Balsamiq is suggested, but this is also a non-free program.
Balsamiq
Visio works well, if you have it.
Personally, I like paper and a pen. Then I can't get bogged down in the LOOK of it, and go more for the usability and function. Same with websites.
Once you have the form infront of a customer, you have zero room to move - it you dont deliver it pixel-perfect, they get..... angry. :)
You don't have to learn the language to use the visual forms designer from Visual Studio to create mockups. Furthermore, the Express Edition of Visual Studio is freely available in several languages, namely VB, C# and C++. Take your pick. All ship with the same forms designer that generates backend code in one of the languages. But if you only need the designer, the code might not be relevant for you.
Microsoft Visio used to come with a template containing common Windows UI elements for this purpose. I don't know if it still does.
Jeff Attwood posted about this on CodingHorror - where he mentions Powerpoint prototyping
pen and paper, or if possible, whiteboard. Once you have something you personally think could work I'd go for as rough a computerized model as you can so you don't spend time agreeing font size before the workflow etc is done. The tool I have used here is my visual designer of Visual Studio (it doesn't look too good with screenshots, only good enough to convey what you'd like to build).
Pencil (runs within firefox)
As suggested, C# Express would be well for this, as like VB, it has a GUI designer, but it is also syntactically similar to Java, so - given what you are trying to learn and do with this, it might be a nice fit.
There is a pretty exhaustive list here:
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GuiPrototypingTools
Important point is whether the tool has "black&white" (or "hand-drawn") skin for your mockups, as already commented by others. Many of the tools (including my own, MockupScreens) do.
wxGlade would work as well, plus it's free software.
http://balsamiq.com/ was already mentioned, but I want to explain why I like it.
It will allow you to sketch up a screenshot, and it still looks like a pen and paper version, or a whiteboard discussion.
If you get to detailed on your screenshot, then the customer thinks you are "done" and does not understand whats taking you so long to finish the project. So this "sketchyness" serves as another layer of abstraction.
MockupUI is another one, but its mockups don't look like hand-drawn. They look like the real thing and with real data. It lets you draw wireframes as well as native widgets inheriting their appearance from your OS configuration (aka Windows visual style).
About high-fidelity mockups: The risk that a customer thinks that it's "already done" is minimal as long as you do your mockups during the design specification phase of your project (that's before starting to code). On the contrary, a sketch may be too abstract for the customer to digest, unless he is a software designer too. Sketches are for developers not customers.
Wireframes (or sketches) and mockups are not the same thing and they have different uses. One is to explain functionality, the other is a representation of what the product will look like. Check out Yisela's post about the difference between wireframes and mockups.
Your question was about mockup screenshot software, but you ended-up buying a pretty powerful wireframing software.
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I would start a J2SE projects for abuntu OS.
I try both Netbeans GUI builder and Eclipse windowbuilder.
Both of them are good, drag&drop, double-click to create event-handler like VisualStudio.
However i have do a research on Netbeans, someone said:
The second major flaw of Matisse is that it just isn't good enough,
you place the components on the grid, Matisse then creates an XML with
the component's attributes, then generates the java code for the
components on the grid. Seems cool, but then you decide you want to
add a button somewhere in the form or resize a component - this
procedure can cause all of the gui to get mixed up throwing the
adjacent components to different places - fixing it can be a pain in
the neck. Even if you managed to place all of the components where
they should be but manually changed some of the generated netbeans
code - you are in a BIG problem, a problem you might not manage to get
out of unless starting all over.
Is that bug still exist on latest netbeans?
What is Pros. and Cons. between Netbeans GUI builder and Eclipse Windowbuilder?
Im using NetBeans since 6.x and never had such problems. Resizing components, adding some new, even working on the generated code etc. is realy easy and had no problem so far. Moreover NB has a visual debugger and an improved GridBagLayout customizer (both since 7.1).
Didn't use Eclipse Windowbuilder so far, but i guess its capable too. Everyone has it's own criteria for a gui builder. Btw. the author of this article seem very eclipse-focused ("on the best IDE out there - eclipse")
I'm sorry i cant give you an answer like "pro / cons of A, pro / cons of B" - as i said i've never used Eclipse Windowbuilder before. And for me there's no need to do so, i can build a gui with netbeans without problems / very easy / fast (even better than with Visual Studio). For my point of view everything works like i want it :-)
If you used both, maybe there are things you prefer or dislike on one IDE, but the other can do better.
Personally, while WindowBuilder is a pretty powerful tool to use within Eclipse, I find it more clunky (and quite honestly, prefer to write Swing GUIs by hand if this were the only optin)
Matisse is a far better option because of the Grid editors like someone mentioned previously, also I prefer the way Matisse handles event handlers over WindowBuilder. Another thing Matisse does well is that it encorporates more properties into GUI element settings where WindowBuilder goes over a very small list of changeable features (leaving you to dive through a mess of auto-generated code to change a simple property).
Eclipse does have a version of matisse available, though the plugin is not for free (look up myeclipse).
I used both Eclipse and Netbeans,
Eclipse -WindowBuilder is a powerful tool, easy to modifying it. But causes more code problems. Long time after you will get Spagetti-Codes to get solve problem.When it get problem you cant open Desing layer.
Netbeans generates codes much easy, and you can change it but more harder, sometimes you can't. But i dont get any (only a few, my mistakes) any code problems...or etc., if you get a problem about a component; you can too easy to get Default Settings any time.
Note: THAT IS ONLY MY IDEA!
I am looking to speed up time to develop website layouts. So I am wondering if using DreamWeaver for layouts is useful - efficient. I am looking at purchasing this software, so, I had a few questions.
I am very comfortable coding HTML, CSS and JavaScript(jQuery) by hand in either PHPDesigner or Notepad++. Most of the time for layouts I use FireFox and Firebug to see results in real time, and then check if it works across different browsers.
I want to know the opinion of people who have worked on the front-end:
I feel code validation is important but not the end of the world(as my priorities) - I do however like to change my code often by hand. Does the output from this software let you do this?(compare to the html/css that micorsoft word vomits - Does this software do a similar thing?)
Is this software used as a primary design tool by people who can code by hand and does it actually improve efficiency? or is it just for newbies?
I understand the Adobe family of products work really well with each other but I am trying to understand is if DreamWeaver really deserves to be in the front-end workflow(if you are proficient coding by hand).
Once you work with HTML/CSS/Javascript enough, it isn't difficult to "code by hand" but it is important to remember that front-end developers also code with their eyes, as well. There is a lot going on up front that depends entirely on the code that runs on the client and you want to use an editor that helps you organize your code and, more importantly, gives you visibility into the challenges presented by complicated CSS and adhering to web standards.
If front-end coding was nothing more than pushing around angle brackets then notepad and repeatedly pressing F5 would be enough. A great web editor will present the structure of your code in a meaningful way and all of your HTML, CSS, and Javascript takes on a complete feel.
You want a professional editor that will allow you to:
Understand CSS inheritance
Run visual diagnostics
Debug across different browsers
Create modern layouts/designs that are faithfully represented
I haven't used Dreamweaver in a few years but, these days, I'm really enjoying Microsoft Expression Web. It is not the FrontPage mess of yesteryears - it is a serious tool for web design and I urge you to take a close look. The code is clean and smart and it certainly gives you the option of using its tools to build a site or you can code everything 100% by hand. Don't forget, the key is not deciding which editor is best for coding by hand. The thing you should be looking for is which editor makes you a better developer.
Regardless of whether or not you're a Microsoft, LAMP, or other platform person, Expression Web is a great tool for front-end developers.
I've been using Dreamweaver for a few years now. While I initially used some of it's code generators, these days I pretty much spend my time in the code widow coding by hand and viewing the output in the browser. The design window is nice for simple coding as it will build the html for you. However, I did have problems getting the right insertion point to edit it. For example, it might place my update before and end tag when I wanted it to be after it. That led my to switch to the coding window to be sure.
I do like the fact that it opens all included files specified in the file you originally opened. I also use it's site views to synchronize my changes to the production server. I'm sure I could take advantage of other features if I bother to learn them. I haven't used any tools besides FrontPage so I can't compare.
Best thing that happened to me was learing about Eclipse and then after about Aptana. I was using notepad++ for everything, but now im doing everything with eclipse and aptana as plugin for eclipse. Just my 2 cents. Oh and its free.
Primarily I do use Adobe Dreamweaver when working on websites. It is a pretty nice tool to use along with Adobe Photoshop for any graphic designs that I create.
Also, I use Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 for Web Application Development (i.e Console apps, Web Apps, Silverlight, etc.). VS is a little different from DW but its still a nice tool for development projects.
Alison, I looked a preview of Expression Web and may check it out. It may aid as an impressive tool for my front-end dvelopment work. I also tried Microsoft Expression Blend when designing Silverlight applications. It does remind you of how Expression Web looks and feels
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As some of you might know I am the lead developer of Padre, The Perl IDE. In the first year of its development, Padre became an acceptable text editor with some extra features for Perl development.
I'd like to ask the Stack Overflow community for some help in driving the project further to turn it into an exceptional IDE for Perl development. So I'd be glad to read what do you think are the most important features of an IDE that are still missing from Padre?.
Especially I'd be interested in people who currently use Eclipse+EPIC, Komodo, Visual Studio, or any of the text editors for programmers.
The most important feature of an IDE for Perl development (including Padre) is:
an interactive debugger that actually works. E.g. remembering breakpoints, ability to drill down into complicated data structures, and copy (to clipboard) should work on watched variables - including a menu command Copy Special that allows putting it in various formats; say CSV, XML or tab-separated.
The two most invaluable features I find:
line-by-line debugging, watchpoints, breakpoints, and so on, so I can properly debug my code.
code completion so I don't have to go looking up docs (even online).
OK, here's my third answer, although I hate to say it.
The competition is pretty easy to install. Padre isn't. I tried to update to the latest release today and, once again, got failing tests.
I am a heavy Perl EPIC user and my biggest gripe is not being able to jump to a function that is clearly defined in the current context (usually by pressing F3). It is pretty
much hit or miss at this point.
Stability. People turn away quickly if their editor crashes and they lose their work.
I work with Komodo. I also use other editors but I come back to Komodo most of the time. A good IDE shoud have:
A good Debugger. Breakpoints, watch lists, everything you need.
Remote debugging. Threads debugging capability.
Syntax highlighting including weighted fonts as well ( I was pretty disappointed by Oxygen, for example, an XSLT IDE, where I can not use bold fonts to emphasize reserved terms)
Syntax completion.
Project management tools, preferable extendable by plugins.
Good VCS integration. This is something that I absolutely love in Eclipse: You instantly see what files have local changes and which aren't added to the repository yet. And you get to browse the different versions and have a nice diff view just one mouse click away.
A project manager. It's essential for me to be able to define the set of files and folders that comprise a particular codebase. Sessions are useful but not a replacement.
Testing integration.
Perl has great unit testing tools. When I run my test suite and get a failure, I want to see the code for the test that failed.
Having a good way to jump through test results and see the code for the failed test along with the expected and actual results would be a great boon.
The first thing I look for is some kind of overview of the currently active file. I'd like to see methods/functions and, if possible, the used modules and especially any use base statements.
You solved that pretty well in Padre.
Visual-Studio style refactoring for variables and function names and extraction of functions.
Visual studio searches your whole module for all references and allows you to see all changed lines in case you do not want to change one instance (for whatever reason)...
The question seems more debatable than answerable.
Risking myself of being accused copyright abuser, I will post contents that I remember from the book "Interactive programming environments" by David R. Barstow, Howard E. Shrobe, Erik Sandewall.
It will not be exactly the same, as I have read the book many years ago and I've jotted down it in another language.
PRINCIPLES OF A GOOD INTERACTIVE PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENT
1: Know the user
+ Know the previous knowledge and practice of the user
2: Minimize the memorization
+ Selection and not characters entering
+ Names and not numbers
+ Predictable behavior: the user should have a previous impression of what the system will do
+ Possible access and changing of the parameters of the system
3: Optimization of operations
+ Fast execution of common operations
+ Inertia of visualization: the screen should change the less possible
+ Memorization of system operation in user's memory
+ The meaning of specific operations should have a simple relationship with the state of the system
+ The system must be prepared to accept more than 10 followed commands per second, so that it can operate on the user's muscular memory
+ The system should be prepared to organize the parameters of a command
4: Engineer for the errors
+ Provide good error messages.
+ Engineer it to remove away the common errors.
+ The system should provide reversible actions.
+ Redundancy: the operations should have more than one way of being done.
+ Integrity of data structures.
The ability to configure and run external (command-line) tools. Plug-ins are great but end-users won't necessarily want to author one just to integrate with an external tool. Allowing users to configure their own tools provides a great deal of extensibility with minimal barriers to entry.
My editor of choice is UltraEdit. It's not an IDE, but through its support for user tools, I've been able to integrate IDE features such as lint, version control, debugging, and more.
This can be possibly achieved via use strict; but could be as well a valuable feature even if not use'd explicitly, namely:
the other day we spent about 10-20 minutes debugging the following behavior:
my %hash;
$hash->{'key1'} = value1;
# on reading in a different module
print $hash{'key1'}; # is, of course, empty, but was so easy to overlook in the code above
resume:
proper Perl type safety brought in by the IDE.
It might be already implemented in Padre, though, as it turned out not in Eclipse+EPIC
I use emacs. I would like a system that helps me refactor code, especially when I'm working on ugly 1999 code that uses the begin-at-the-beginning-go-to-the-end philosophy combined with duplicate-and-modify.
I looked at Eclipse, but I can't work with a system that requires me to create a project before I can make a one-character correction to a file.
I looked at Padre, but it's slow and crashes.
I looked at Kod which claims to be configured by CSS, but I can't find a man page that will tell me where to put the CSS.
Integration of a read-eval-print loop. As a heavy Emacs user, I very much appreciate Sepia. Very useful for trying things out before I commit them to code.
Ability to create and debug XS code.
The ability to use my own choice of editor (which it may have, as far as I know). That has a chance of winning over the vim/emacs people.
I don't know if Padre can do this, but the ability to split the screen is very important to me. As a VIM user, I constantly split my screen to look at another file while coding.
Line ending policies for files, by directory, and project-wide.
So, for a given project or directory, I'd like to make all line endings be LF only. While in another directory I may wish to have a mix of CRLF and LF files.
I work a lot on stuff that goes back and forth between Unix and Win32 environments.
The typical solution of automatically converting all files back and forth as one moves from platform to platform hasn't worked well for me.
When a file gets created in the wrong format by accident, it can be a real pain.
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The people writing the user manual are not necessarily programmers, and they need a visual editor. A major issue is the internal format of the authoring tool; it should be readable text/html, so it's easy to compare versions of individual pages checked into version control.
DocBook
(source: docbook.org)
Microsoft HTML Help Workshop can be used to create good quality professional CHM help files. All you need is a bunch of HTML files. The tool "compiles" all these and bundles into a single Help file.
The HTML files can be generated using Microsoft Word/Frontpage or even Dreamweaver. You might want to consider source controlling these HTML files.
Latex. Lyx provides WYSIWYM for writing latex files.
At my old job they used a tool by madcap software called flare.
It seemed to work really well.
There are other professional products which allow help file writing and they have support of "context ID" which makes context sensitive help possible. Doc To Help and RoboHelp are these type of products.
A good combination to consider is Subversion, DocBook and Publican.
Version control = Subversion
Content Authoring = DocBook
Publishing = Publican
Optional WYSIWYG = Serna
At the moment, this is one of the toolchains in use by the world's largest provider of open source solutions, and the name behind much of the world's use of Linux-based operation systems in the enterprise market. Most (and close to all) of Red Hat's official documentation is created in such a manner. Same goes for Fedora.
The major "pro" here is that these are freely available tools, with a strong overlap in the market of technical writers. All of which will be able to (but might not want to) write in XML, and picking up DocBook is like picking up HTML in the 90's. Subversion is a very common version control tool, that like DocBook is relatively easy to implement and use. Publican is a great publishing tool that can take DocBook XML, and publish it to PDF, HTML, HTML-single, etc. Obviously your writers can use a WYSIWYG like Serna, but I use snippets in Geany (on Fedora) or TextMate (on OS X) personally.
The major "con" is the perception of technicality. Your writers might want WYSIWYG (and can have it), and depending on your documentation needs, this might be what you end up using. As you would know, there's a market out there for "Technical Writers" who specialize in fixing Microsoft Word styles (and markup), so the arguments for separating "authoring" from "publishing" are based on proven but distinct use cases for organizations that require documentation to be held up to the same standards of the engineering/programming/source production.
Some of the extreme advice you will get comes from people and companies that have been exposed to the value of XML documentation, and especially those in the realms of DITA, where certain multi-nationals have a reputation for acquisitions that are influenced by the format and availability of the product knowledge. there are also the arguments that locking your documentation into a "sticky" or closed format doesn't help the future maintenance requirements. This is where the open source options gain support on a corporate level. Plus, obviously, it's free.
You can use Subversion and MGTEK Help Producer. Help Producer makes help files from Word documents. TortoiseSVN comes with scripts to compare different revisions of Word documents, in Word itself (Word has a version compare tool).
Your users are going to want a visual diff tool that resembles the one they are editing in. If they are just slightly not-technical, DocBook or Latex aren't going to work (I've tried giving my users both, and I even tried Epic Editor as a DocBook editor which is very expensive but didn't work out very well after all). Sticking to something they know (Word) will prevent you many headaches.
I was very reluctant to go this route at first too, because I wanted a solution that was more 'technically perfect', but I realized over time that having happy and productive users was more important. Just saying that I know where you're coming from, but try the Word route - it works much better in practice than all the 'pure' text-based solutions that are out there. Regular users don't like markup based editing.
If you're using Visual Studio, take a look at SandCastle - http://www.codeplex.com/Sandcastle.
There's also a couple of tools that help you build sandcastle files, try searching "sandcastle" on codeplex. One of them is SandCastle Help File Builder (http://www.codeplex.com/SHFB), but I've never used it so I don't know if non-technical users will be happy with that.
Mapcap Flare is the best commercial tool around. Written by the ex-developers of Robodoc
I created a documentation system called Mandown (Markdown/Html/Javascript/file-based relatively linked documents for portability) which would easily go under version control. The visual editor part you would have to figure out separately - I sometimes use HTML-Kit which at least has a preview feature.
See What is the best way to store software documentation?
Here's another tool to check out: Xilize
We are using APT. It integrates well with the CI (standard build artifact) and is more alive than for instance word document. It is also possible to generate PDFs and other formats when needed.
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As a developer I really don't like writing documentation but when I have to I'd like to make the process as painless as possible.
The problem with Word is that it constantly gets in my way. I worry more about the layout than about the actual content ... that's why I'd like to get rid of Word.
Ideally I'd like to write my content and then 'compile' it into a document.
I've heard of LaTeX but I don't have any experience with it whatsoever. Would this be the right technology for the job? What editor (Windows) should I use? Is it a good idea to start with LyX?
EDIT: I'm not asking about documenting code (I use Sandcastle for that).
Update 2014:
We have now switched to GFM (GitHub Flavored Markdown).
It's really easy to work with.
Write code & documentation in the same IDE!
Everything can be versioned!
Get great output either as raw txt, html or pdf!
My solution to this was to invest some time in creating a decent Word Template for myself.
The important thing to do is make sure you have a Style defined for everything you can put in the document.
Once you have all the Styles defined and all of the document content tagged with the correct Style instead of formatted in an ad hoc fashion, you'll be surprised how easy it is to produce good looking Word documents quickly every time.
The wider problem here is that everyone spends hours in Word and yet it is very rare for companies to invest in Word training. At some point you have to bite the bullet and take the time to teach yourself how to use it properly, just like you would with any other tool.
Anything you can do with LyX you can do with LaTeX. LaTeX is suitable for all sorts of things; it has been used for everything from manuals to lecture slides to novels.
I think LaTeX is probably worth looking into as an option; if you've ever wanted to "code" for your word processor, LaTeX is for you. At the simplest level you can define new commands to do things for you, but there's a lot of power there. And the output looks really neat.
In my opinion, LyX is fantastic in certain circumstances, handy in others, and occasionally just gets in your way. I think it should be seen as a productivity booster for LaTeX. In other words, learn to use LaTeX before trying LyX. Both are of course free and available for Windows, though the learning curve is quite steep compared with MS Word. For long documents, or plenty of similar documents, LaTeX/LyX is probably a worthwhile investment.
I've found that wikis can be good for this. Find a wiki you like that lets you do a bit of formatting, but nothing really heavy. Ideally it should let you format code easily too - to be honest, the markdown available on SO is probably a good start.
That way:
You have change tracking built-in (assuming a decent wiki)
You can edit from anywhere
Everyone always sees the same documentation (instant distribution)
You can concentrate on content instead of formatting
You could write your documentation using your own XML format and then transform it into any format with XSL (e.g. PDF via FOP+XSL-FO ).
See also the DocBook XML format.
LaTeX is an extremely powerful tool and might well be overkill here as it is designed for scientific/mathematical literature. It has a (relatively) steep learning curve and can be tricky to coax to do exactly as you want if you're new to it. I LOVE LaTeX, but it is not really a general purpose word processor.
Have you considered OpenOffice instead?
LaTeX is really a very powerful language if you need to write documents.
Perhaps you can try texmaker, a cross-platform LaTeX editor:
Texmaker is a clean, highly
configurable LaTeX editor with good
hot key support and extensive Latex
documentation. Texmaker integrates
many tools needed to develop
documents with LaTeX, in just one
application. It has some nice
features such as syntax highlighting,
insertion of 370 mathematical symbols
with only one click, and "structure
view" of the document for easier
navigation.
What about using HTML? This way you could then publish the documentation if there will be need for many people to access it from many places.
Despite all efforts and reasonable expectation I don't think Word Processing has been "solved" yet.
My response to what I also personally find a deeply frustrating experience with MS Word is to avoid it altogether and use an auto-documenting tool like GhostDoc to generate XML from what I've already written in the code (DRY!) and deal with the XML from an XSLT based intranet site or similar later.
Are you talking about documenting your actual code? If so, I recommend Doxygen for unmanaged code and Sandcastle for managed code. Both will compile your help or build it as a website for you.
Both applications will read special tags above functions / classes / variables and compile that into the help.
Well I've never found anything wrong with MS-Word in the first place. (i.e if you take the time to know how to use it effectively). OpenOffice indeed is an amazing & credible free alternative - but then if you hate MS Word for layout related problems, the same problem is gonna occur with OpenOffice too.
Never tried the Latex system myself, but have heard its good for scientific work. I think using some HTML WYSIWYG editor would be best for you, if you want to just focus on the content.
I considered a wiki, but I decided to go with a modified Markdown notation, for the simple reason, that a wiki's content isn't easily exported and distributed outside of the wiki itself, while the Markdown can be rendered into HTML.
Answer to chris' question about my workflow: I write the documentation with a Notepad-like application (TextWrangler, only because of its word-wrapping feature) in its raw Markdown format. Then I have a small localhost documentation website with my modified Markdown parser (extended for a few features and a bit more HTML-oriented functionality) that checks for the timestamps for the documentation files - if a file has been updated, it parses that file into HTML, and stores the file in a cache.
This way I'm able to edit the source documentation on my desktop, and just press F5 in my browser to see the results immediately.
I haven't got around to trying it yet, but I've always thought AsciiDoc would be good for this kind of thing.
If you want something simpler than LaTeX, you can have a look at ReStructured Text
Read this book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pragmatic_Programmer . There is some idee fixe inside, so that documentation should be built automatically. Think about using your IDE for this, or look for some additional tools. Most modern languages support generating documentation as you write the code. This can simply maintain your doc in touch with latest changes in the code.
I prefer to use a RTF editor which is a lot less clunkier than words. This way the formatting and all the headers/footers nonsense will not take up half your time. Wordpad has worked for me on several occasions. I'm stuck with Word for now though :(
there are a lot of possible ways:
embedded documentation, e.g. javadoc: good for describing APIs, not so good for the "big picture"
plain html: can be checked in under version control, a definite plus
a wiki, e.g. confluence -- great for collaboration, but has version control different from your source
LaTeX or somesuch: better suited for books or papers than typical documentation; support for graphics is cumbersome
an Office clone, e.g. OpenOffice: mostly the same as Word+Visio, but open source, with a nicer document format
I usually document the software structure (the "metaphors" of a project, component interrelations, external systems) up front, using Visio, in "freeform" UML. These are then embedded in confluence, which can be converted to PDF if someone wants a printout.
LyX
LyX is a WYSIWYM front end to LaTeX: You get the convenience of a document processor (somewhat similar to Word) with the consistency and power of LaTeX: It doesn't get in your way and can do a lot of things that professional writers need.
Note: The correct answer for you really depends on your way of thinking --- we can't decide this for you. This answer simply shows an excellent choice if you think of documentations as documents and want something similar to Word (where Word is good) that doesn't suck as Word (where Word is bad for programmers).
But many programmers think of documentation differently and hence prefer different metaphors. I myself had the same problem years ago, worked with LaTeX (as I am a mathematician), found LyX and finally settled on a Wiki/Source system that I wrote myself.
Vim is the solution for anything that means writing plain text in the most efficient possible way. If you need formatting, then use XML, Latex or something similar (in Vim).
Vim changed my life!
Simple answer: LaTeX sounds like just what you are looking for.
I use it for writing documentation myself. I will never go back to Word if I have the option.
At phc, we started with latex, then moved to docbook, and have settled (permanently I hope) on Restructured Text/Sphinx.
Latex was chosen because we are academics, and latex is the tool of choice. I believe it didn't generate good enough HTML.
Docbook was chosen for power, but it was very unwieldy. It put us off writing any documentation: code had to be manually formatted, we kept forgetting the syntax, and it was difficult to read. The learning curve was also steep.
Finally, we moved to reST, using sphinx, and that was a great decision. Documentation is now very easy to write, and both PDF and HTML versions look beautiful (though the PDF could do with some customization). Its very easy to customize too.
The best bit about reST though, is that its human readable in source form. That is a wonderful advantage. I've switched to using reST for all my stuff now, especially anything over the web (except of course academic papers, where one would be foolish to use anything but latex).
You may want to look into doxygen at http://www.doxygen.nl/, see their nice examples. In this case, the documentation is presented by tags in comments in the source.
Another option would be to use an online system like trac from http://trac.edgewall.org/ which is a wiki/doc/issuetracking system that lives on top of subversion.