We're excited to announce ePublisher 2025.1. This release centers on Reverb 2.0, bringing modern accessibility standards, search engine optimization, and intelligent content navigation to your documentation. Alongside Reverb 2.0, we've made practical improvements to AutoMap automation and the Markdown++ adapter that address real workflow pain points.
Reverb 2.0: A Major Leap Forward
Reverb 2.0 has received a wide range of updates in this release, addressing needs we've been hearing about from documentation teams—accessibility compliance, search engine visibility, and better content navigation. Here's what's new.
Accessibility: Built for Everyone
The centerpiece of Reverb 2.0 is comprehensive accessibility support designed for users who rely on assistive technologies. We've implemented the WAI-ARIA specification throughout the output, ensuring that your documentation is accessible to screen reader users and keyboard-only navigators.
Semantic landmarks and ARIA support bring structure to every page. Reverb 2.0 uses HTML5 semantic elements like main, nav, header, and footer so users can quickly jump between page regions. Interactive elements include proper ARIA roles, states, and properties—toggle buttons use aria-pressed to communicate state, expandable controls use aria-expanded, and all controls have descriptive labels.
Localized ARIA labels ensure accessibility across global audiences. All interactive elements include ARIA labels in 25 languages, from English and Spanish to Japanese, Korean, Arabic, and Chinese (Simplified and Traditional). These labels are defined in locales.xml and can be customized per project to match your terminology.
Keyboard navigation provides full control without a mouse. Users can navigate with Alt+N and Alt+P to move between topics, Alt+Home to return to the home page, and F6 to cycle focus between major page regions. Standard Tab, Enter, Space, and Escape keys work as expected throughout the interface. On macOS, the Option key replaces Alt.
Focus management keeps keyboard users oriented. When a lightbox opens, focus automatically moves to the lightbox content. When it closes, focus returns to the trigger element. Search results receive focus when they appear, eliminating the need to manually navigate back to results.
Skip navigation links let users bypass repetitive navigation. A configurable "Skip to main content" link can be enabled via Target Settings under Accessibility. It appears as the first focusable element on the page, visually hidden until it receives keyboard focus, giving screen reader users direct access to page content.
We've validated this accessibility implementation with screen readers like NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access). All images include alt text, form controls have labels, dynamic updates use ARIA live regions set to "polite," and proper heading hierarchy is maintained throughout.
SEO: Make Your Documentation Discoverable
Search engine optimization features in Reverb 2.0 improve how your documentation appears in search results and on social media. We've added automatic generation of sitemap.xml for search engine crawling and indexing, along with a configurable robots.txt file to control crawler behavior.
Open Graph meta tags enable rich previews when your documentation URLs are shared on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. Twitter Card support provides optimized link previews on Twitter/X. These structured metadata additions help your documentation make a strong first impression when shared across social channels or linked from support tickets.
Landmark IDs and Share Widget: Navigate and Share with Precision
A notable addition to Reverb 2.0 is the new Landmark ID system. Landmark IDs provide stable, content-based identifiers for navigation to specific locations within your documentation. Using deterministic Blake2b hashing, these URLs persist across documentation regenerations—meaning links shared in support tickets, external references, or AI-powered search integrations won't break when you republish.
Authors can control which headings receive Landmark IDs using the new Generate Landmark ID paragraph style option in the Style Designer. This gives you precision control over which sections of your documentation can be linked directly.
The Share Widget builds on Landmark IDs to let end users copy and share direct links to specific content locations. Users can share these stable URLs via email, support tickets, or collaboration tools, knowing the link will continue to work across documentation updates. The Share Widget is enabled by default and can be configured via Target Settings with the share-widget boolean setting.
Knowledge Base: AI-Ready Documentation Out of the Box
Reverb 2.0 now generates a Knowledge Base alongside your help output—a structured Markdown archive of your documentation content. This archive is designed to be consumed by AI agents, making it straightforward to feed your published content into large language models, custom GPTs, or retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) workflows.
If you've been following our work on integrating AI chat into Reverb 2.0, the Knowledge Base is a key building block for that effort. Rather than manually preparing your content for AI consumption, the Knowledge Base gives you a clean, well-structured export that's ready to go. As we continue developing the integrated AI assistant, this Knowledge Base will serve as the foundation for how the assistant understands and retrieves answers from your documentation.
Additional Reverb 2.0 Improvements
Click to Zoom functionality allows users to view graphics at larger sizes in a lightbox overlay. Authors control which images support this behavior using the new Click to Zoom graphic style option in the Style Designer. The lightbox is fully keyboard accessible—users can press Escape to close it, and focus returns to the trigger element.
Cache busting eliminates the frustration of stale browser caches after documentation updates. Reverb 2.0 automatically appends version query parameters to CSS, JavaScript, and other resource URLs, ensuring browsers load the latest versions without requiring manual cache clearing from end users.
Search results breadcrumbs now display the location of each result within the documentation hierarchy. This context helps users understand where a result fits in the bigger picture and navigate more effectively to the content they need.
Front page TOC behavior gives publishers control over the initial table of contents state. A new front page behavior setting lets you choose whether the TOC starts collapsed or open, tailoring the navigation experience to your audience's preferences.
AutoMap Enhancements
AutoMap picks up two practical improvements in this release. The new --skip-reports command-line option skips report generation during builds, significantly improving conversion times on large projects where report output isn't needed. This is particularly valuable in CI/CD pipelines where build speed matters.
Designer project support extends AutoMap Administrator's flexibility. You can now create project-based jobs using ePublisher Designer projects (.wep) in addition to Express projects (.wrp), providing greater automation options across different project types.
Markdown Improvements
The Markdown++ output format gets several fixes and enhancements worth noting. Automatic output markers now emit built-in markers including PageStyle, GraphicStyle, and IndexMarker without requiring Stationery configuration. These markers capture important metadata from source documents automatically. Marker emission can be controlled on a per-style basis using the Style Designer.
We've also fixed an issue where image files missing the DPI property reported zero size height and width, resolved link references in multiline tables that failed to render correctly, and fixed UTF-8 character handling so the Markdown adapter can now read characters like the FrameMaker pilcrow that are commonly used in variables.
Other Changes
The deprecated XML+XSL output format has been fully removed from the product, completing the deprecation process started in ePublisher 2024.1. We've also added XSLT extension examples to C# XML documentation comments, providing developers with inline code samples in the API reference.
Get Started with ePublisher 2025.1
ePublisher 2025.1 is available now. Here's how to get going:
- Download ePublisher 2025.1 — Grab the latest build and start publishing with the new Reverb 2.0 features.
- Read the full release notes — Detailed information on every change, fix, and new feature in this release.
- Contact our sales team — If you need help with licensing, upgrading, or want to discuss how 2025.1 fits into your workflow.
- Join us on Discord — Questions, feedback, or just want to chat about the release? Our community and team are always around.
We'd love to hear how these features work for your projects.