Quadralay will implement support for Firepad's FireViewer format into Quadralay's WebWorks suite of software products. This will automate the conversion of FrameMaker documents for delivery to Palm devices. Correspondingly, Firepad will resell Quadralay's WebWorks products to enterprises seeking to deliver FrameMaker documentation to handhelds. Both companies expect this partnership to result in easily delivered documentation to Handspring Visor, IBM WorkPad, Palm, Sony Clie, Symbol SPT, and other Palm OS-based units.

"Quadralay and Firepad are teaming to get documentation to handhelds," said Jeff Stockett, chief executive officer of Quadralay Corp. "Most documentation and help systems were designed for hardcopy delivery using tools like FrameMaker. By adding FireViewer to the range of formats supported by our award-winning WebWorks Publisher Professional software program, Quadralay makes it even easier for companies to leverage the investment they've made in their existing documentation. Soon, WebWorks will automatically speed the delivery of volumes of crucial information to handheld devices."

The current version of Quadralay's WebWorks Publisher Professional, an upgrade to Quadralay's WebWorks Publisher 2000 product, features support for emerging Internet standards XML and XHTML. It also introduces WebWorks Help 2.0, a fully-XML-based online help system. Being XML-based allows WebWorks Help 2.0 to provide flexibility in help system design by enabling the separation of content from presentation elements.

The current version of FireViewer supports color video, graphics, text, and hyperlinks on the Palm. The company has released FirePublisher, a server application suite for converting and delivering text and graphics to FireViewer-enabled handheld devices and will release FireProducer, for streaming color or grayscale video, later this month.