Help+Manual News

Premium Pack 3.1 Update


We are delighted to announce the release of the first major update to Premium Pack 3 for Help & Manual 7. This update brings several important new features, adds a wide range of improvements and corrects a number of issues in the original skins. The update is free for all Premium Pack 3 users.

How to get the update:

You can download and install the updated version with the same download link and installation password from the mail you received when you purchased your copy of Premium Pack 3. If you no longer have this please contact support@ec-software.com and we will help you out.

See the Premium Pack product page for more details on Premium Pack 3 and visit our online store to purchase.

New Features in the V3 Responsive skins:

Language Files for all Skin Types
To make translations easier, the Premium Pack Toolbox utility can now export and import all the interface texts stored in your skin to and from external language files. Users can now share their language versions, which we will make available with skin updates as we receive them. German and English language files are included for all skins. 

Field-level Topics
The very popular field-level popups have now been supplemented by field-level topics. You can now display entire topic pages from your help without taking the user away from your page. Toggles, popups and even videos are supported on the pages.

URL switches for Search and Index tabs
The V3 responsive skins now support URL switches for Index and Search. You can create links to the help that open the keyword index or search tab and perform a search for a specified keyword.

Additional programming options for embedded help
We have added additional options for JavaScript programmers for handling embedded help on your pages. You can open and close the embedded help from your own scripts, and specify a “callback function” to be executed after the help opens or closes.

Blink effect for anchor targets
In the V2 skins the targets of anchor links and Auto-TOC headings blink twice briefly after you scroll to them as a cue to the user. This turned out to be so popular that users were missing it in the V3 Responsive skins. We have now restored it there and made it configurable. You can turn it off with a configuration variable.

Improvement for operation without a web server
We have corrected the jquery.history.js component to work better with Internet Explorer when displaying WebHelp locally without a web server. It now also works correctly from paths containing spaces and paths to local servers like NAS devices.

Fixes and Improvements:

The 3.1 update package includes the following fixes and improvements. Most of them apply to the new V3 Responsive skins, but we have also made some key changes to the WebHelp/EWriter skins.

V3 Responsive Skins:

  • Field-level popups can now be closed with the ESC key as well as the close icon. They can be called with the topic ID on its own, without the previously required “.js” extension.
  • Accented and umlaut characters in variables were rendered incorrectly in WebHelp output during browsing (but not on the first page). This fix requires updating to Help & Manual 7.0.9 or later
  • Anchor links to topics in popups did not scroll to the anchor.
  • Topics with multiple entries in the TOC: Selecting a duplicate TOC entry highlighted the first entry pointing to that topic instead of the one that was clicked or tapped.
  • Links to topics with anchors did not work if the links were on the default topic page (index.html).
  • Links to anchors didn’t work if the anchor name contained a dot.
  • The titles of topics defined without headers in Help & Manual did not display correctly.
  • Some interface variables were not updated in templates when they were edited.
  • If there was more than one video light box on a topic page, only the first one worked.
  • Opened image toggles did not close if the user navigated to a new topic while the toggle was open.
  • Some entries for variables and settings in PP Toolbox showed an error message even if you entered correct values (errors in the plausibility checks for some values).
  • Variables for the texts in the permalink popup were not applied when the variable texts were edited.
  • Variables in topic footer didn’t update when browsing to new topics. Topic footer failed to display on browsing without a web server.
  • Browsing WebHelp without a web server failed on some non-mapped drives, for example NAS systems in the local network.
  • Browser history sometimes failed when browsing via the TOC (back button went to the previous page instead of the previous topic).
  • Show/Hide Expanding Text hamburger menu item did not switch to “Hide” when toggles are open in a topic when the topic is first loaded.

V2 WebHelp/EWriter skins:

  • New variables for setting the maximum width of the browsing, search and index tabs and the current title displayed in the browser tab.
  • Tools in the toolbar were sometimes too widely spaced the first time the help was opened.
  • Improved topic print preview and multi-page printing for both WebHelp and EWriter.
  • New variable for setting monochrome printing (sets all text on the page to black and all backgrounds to transparent for the printout.

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