You can now create hyperlinks to your help that automatically open the Search or Keyword Index pane and optionally perform a search for a search term or an index keyword. You can also select a topic in the help at the same time.

This is done with simple switches in the URL. For example

index.html?nav=index  (opens the keyword index pane)
index.html?index=aardvark (opens the index pane and searches for a keyword containing "aardvark")
index.html?nav=search (opens the search pane)
index.html?search=hyphens&mytopic.htm (opens the search pane, searches for "hyphens" and opens mytopic.htm

See URL switches for detailed instructions.

Expanding text and inline text toggles now animate smoothly instead of "snapping" open and shut. This is quick enough so that it doesn't get in the way but it provides a valuable visual cue to the user, making it easier to see the content that has become visible. The logic also handles nested toggles correctly.

This is also supported in the dedicated iPad skin. Here, opening one toggle automatically closes the other toggles on the page for smoother browsing. We experimented with this for the desktop skins as well but it didn't work so well there, so we decided to restrict it to the iPad skin where topics are generally smaller. On the desktop skin the user can always close the other toggles with the Toggle Toggles button.

The browser on some versions of the now obsolete Windows CE mobile operating system pretend to be Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP, even though its capabilities are quite different. The initialization script now identifies this browser and switches off the Show/Hide TOC feature, which the Windows CE browser is incapable of handling. The version of the browser that identifies itself honestly as Windows CE is still blocked, however, as it is not capable of handling WebHelp correctly.

The Table of Contents, Search and Keyword Index pages now contain meta tags to prevent them from being included in search engine indexes. The TOC is set to "noindex, follow" so that its own contents are not indexed but all the pages referenced in the TOC are indexed. The keyword index and search pages are set to "noindex, nofollow" to prevent both indexing of the pages themselves and the links they point to.

You can now add user comments to your WebHelp using IntenseDebate or Disqus as your comment provider. You just need to sign up for a free account with IntenseDebate or Disqus and add the ID from your provider and the URL of your WebHelp to the configuration variables. See User Comments in WebHelp.

We have added a dedicated webhelp iPad skin for producing an iPad version of your WebHelp. This provides an iPad style interface and full touch support, including:

•Single-finger scrolling in TOC and topics.

•Pinch to zoom in topics.

•Zoom button for displaying topics in their own window.

•Automatic reformatting on orientation change (landscape/portrait).

•Opening a toggle auto-closes all the other toggles on the page to save space.

•Automatic redirect to a page of your choice when opened in another browser.

Three new configuration variables have been added that enable you to change the index and search highlight colors from the standard yellow to any other color you like. See the variable reference page for details.

Version 1.31 adds some basic options to handle users viewing your WebHelp with the Apple iPad and iPhone and other mobile devices. The help can now be viewed reasonably well on the iPad and iPhone using two-finger gestures to scroll in topics and the table of contents, index and search panes.

However, the Google Android operating system cannot currently handle scrolling elements on the screen at all and is thus not compatible with this version of WebHelp. The new version automatically displays a warning that the help is not compatible with Android and less capable mobile devices (Blackberry, Windows CE, Series 60, Symbian). Optionally, you can also enter a web address to which users should be redirected when they view your help with one of these devices. You can also enter redirect addresses for iPhone and iPad users if you want.

This feature transforms the simple JavaScript popups available in WebHelp and HTML Help, making them both more attractive and more useful. Instead of a static popup box displayed below the popup link, you get an automatically-sized popup that always fits in the browser viewport. See Using Advanced JS Popups for full details and instructions.

•Draggable and resizable with an attractive 3D effect

•Stay in view when the page is scrolled

•Contain formatted text, hyperlinks, images with hotspots

•Can contain videos (not draggable or resizable)

•Automatically displayed with scrollbars when necessary

This feature radically improves the usefulness of the keyword index in WebHelp. Just enter text in the Search field and press Enter or click on Search and the first highlighted hits will scroll into view. Press again to scroll to the next hits in the list. The search finds the text you enter anywhere in the index, not just at the beginning of each index entry.

See Copying Settings with PP Updater for details.

Now you no longer need to reconfigure your Premium Pack skins when the pack is updated or when you decide to start using a different skin. The PP Updater utility copies all your configuration settings from one skin or template to another. You can use it to copy your settings from an older version of the Premium Pack or to transfer settings between skins from the same Premium Pack.

See Copying Settings with PP Updater for details.

Instead of a simple link at the bottom of the topic the Topic URL option now inserts a link that displays a small dialog containing the selectable permalink to the topic. There are buttons to copy the permalink to the user's clipboard and to bookmark the topic in the user's browser.

Recent changes to some browsers have reduced the ability to print a whole topic directly from the topic frame. Selecting the Print button now generates a printable version of the topic with a print preview in an external window. This ensures that printing works in all browsers.

There are two new configuration variables for dealing with a couple of annoying bugs in Chrome and Safari. Currently both these browsers cause problems with the TOC Show/Hide button and Chrome also has a "security feature" that prevents the display of WebHelp on local computers.

A number of smaller new features and bugfixes have also been included in this update. See Update History for full details.

•ToggleJump now also works for index entries that link to anchors in toggles in both CHM and WebHelp

•Mail feedback button improved to work better with WebMail clients

•Chapter + subtopics printing bug in CHM files fixed

•XHTML is now the standard output format – this is automatic and independent of your settings in your project

•Workaround for TOC Show/Hide bug in Google Chrome and Apple Safari

•User warning for Google Chrome WebHelp bug on local drives

•New version of the jQuery JavaScript framework

•Dummy 3-frame header file export improved (only included for 3-frame output)

Added in version 1.24, this new button allows the user to hide the navigation pane in WebHelp to get more space on the screen. The button slides out automatically when you mouseover the tab, clicking on the tab shows or hides the navigation pane. If the user has cookies enabled the function will remember the width of the navigation pane between topics. If cookies are disabled the standard width of the navigation pane set in your configuration variables will be restored when the button is clicked after changing topics.

Workaround for WebKit browsers (Chrome, Safari, Android) in 1.30

Web browsers based on the WebKit engine have a bug that makes it impossible to set the width of frames correctly after the user has changed the frame width, which breaks the Show/Hide navigation pane feature.

You can now define any table in your project as sortable. In WebHelp and HTML Help the user can then click on the column header of any sortable column top re-sort all the table rows on that column. Clicking again reverses the sort direction. Here's an example of a sortable table. This one sorts by default on the text column, but you don't need a default sort column if you don't want one.

Click in the column headers to resort the table. (The help must be compiled with a Premium Pack skin for this to work in your output.)

You can sort on columns containing text, numeric, currency, physical values (e.g. °C) and dates. Alternating row colors are supported and there are many other features. See Using Sortable Tables for details.

The new Auto-TOC feature generates a drop-down menu with which the user can navigate to the headings in the current topic. All you need to do is use header styles with names that include the strings _atoc_ (main header) or _atocs_ (subheader) in their names – the headers formatted with those styles are automatically included in the Auto-TOC. You can rename styles for this in seconds.

Try it now: Just click on the button in the navigation header to see the Auto-TOC for this topic. you will notice that this also works with toggle headings and automatically opens the toggles as it scrolls to them.

Normally you can't create hyperlinks that jump into closed drop-down toggles, but with Premium Pack 1.2 skins you can.

You don't need to do anything new: Just put your anchors in toggle headers or inside toggle tables and link to them. If the anchor is in a toggle header the toggle will be opened. If it is inside a toggle the toggle will be opened and the topic will then scroll down to the anchor position. This also works for targets inside toggles that are inside other toggles (nested toggles).

Try it now with these links:

Link to a toggle header on another page
Link to an anchor inside a toggle on this page

You can activate a navigation button with which the user can expand or collapse all toggles on the current page with a single click. This is intelligent – if one or more toggles are open they will be closed, otherwise all toggles will be opened.

Try it now: Try clicking on the button in this topic to see it working.

The URL reference that can be displayed at the bottom of WebHelp pages now reads and displays the current location of your WebHelp automatically. You no longer need to enter this information in your configuration variables except for users viewing your pages without JavaScript.

The code in the skin pack has been reworked and accelerated in many ways. All the JavaScript code is compressed for faster loading and execution and the page layout code has also been optimized for better performance. For example, the WebHelp tabs can no longer scrunch up if the user makes the navigation pane very narrow – there are also many other such minor improvements.