I created an app to streamline the publishing process for API documentation.

• Role: UX content writer & Developer
• Timeframe December 2014 to August 2015
• Methods and skills: workflow mapping, web design, app development, testing
• Tools: Vasont, XMetal, C#, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, node.js, lunr.js, Grunt, regular expressions

Background

I helped created the first Symantec API portal. During that project, I realized that Vasont, our Content Management System, couldn’t produce the layout and features our API documentation needed. To deliver modern, stylish, and functional API documentation for our users, I needed to create an app that transformed the Vasont HTML output into ready-to-publish documentation that any of our authors could build and publish to the API portal.

Methods

I wrote the app in C# and used grunt to create a static search index for the documentation with lunr.js. The app performs a series of text transformations to update the page structure and add navigation, style, and other features like syntax highlighting and code-language switching.

Results

The app fit perfectly into the authoring workflow with drag-and-drop publishing to the API portal. With the app, API content writers authors could use Vasont to produce PDF documentation for teams that required it and still create modern, stylish documentation for the API portal.

Before

After