Sandcastle Tidy, Caret Browsing, Update Skin Config Tool
We are happy to announce the release of Premium Pack 4.4.0 with three new features and a wide range of other improvements and fixes. Sandcastle Tidy puts your Microsoft Sandcastle documentation import fully under the control of the project stylesheet. Caret browsing support for tabbed navigation in the TOC and header has been added to the V3 and V4 skins. The Update Skin Config tool for transferring your settings from old to new skins has been significantly improved, now showing you only the settings in your old skin that are different from those in the new skin.
How to get the Premium Pack update
You can download and install the updated version with the download link and personal installation password you received when you purchased. If you no longer have these details please contact support@ec-software.com and we will help you out. See the Premium Pack product page for more details on Premium Pack 4 and visit our online store to purchase if you do not yet have it.
Sandcastle Tidy in the Toolbox utility
Microsoft Sandcastle is bundled with Help+Manual to enable .NET developers to create Help+Manual documentation projects directly from their Visual Studio comments and assemblies. Help+Manual 8.4.2 improves the Sandcastle import feature in Help+Manual by adding all the styles created by Sandcastle to the project stylesheet automatically. Unfortunately, the styles implementation in the topic source code generated by Sandcastle is not optimized, making it impossible to make global formatting changes without a lot of extra manual work. The new Sandcastle Tidy function in Toolbox automatically cleans up everything so that you can do all your formatting via the stylesheet, including the code example tables generated by Sandcastle.
Caret browsing in V3 and V4 skins
Caret browsing improves keyboard navigation and accessibility and was not previously supported by these skins. Basically, it allows users to navigate in the TOC with the tab key on the keyboard instead of the mouse. Support for it must be activated in the user’s browser because it is usually disabled by default. In most browsers it can be toggled on and off with F7.
Significantly improved Update Skin Config tool in Toolbox
All the options in the Update Skin Config tool in Toolbox now only show settings that are different from those in the new skin in each category. This includes safe baggage files edited by the user (things like headers, footers and logos) and baggage files added by the user. This makes updating new skins more efficient, showing you what you have configured and what will be updated by the tool.
Other Toolbox changes and improvements
Button highlights:
The button for the currently selected display group is now highlighted automatically for easier identification (Variables, HTML Options, Skin Options etc).
Delete temporary files tool:
A Delete Temporary Files tool has been added to the Tools menu. This tool is for tidying up only and deletes all old temporary files created in the user’s AppData directory when Toolbox is not configured to put them in a subfolder of the current project folder.
Other skin changes and improvements
New “scroll to top” feature for user links:
In V3 and V4 skins you can now create your “scroll to top of topic” links with a new function for script links. This function is available in all V3 and V4 skins. This is necessary because just creating a link to the current topic cannot work in the same way as in standard skins with V3 and V4.
Topic Auto-TOC menu scrolls if it becomes too long:
The Topic Auto-TOC menu for navigating in the current topic now automatically becomes scrollable if it is so long that it would otherwise project off the bottom of the page.
Embedded help – open on first access:
In some configurations the embedded help didn’t show if it was configured to be displayed by default on opening the page instead of opened by the user clicking on a button or link.
Embedded help – zoom help to fill page:
The original zoom function for embedded help sometimes had problems on some types of pages. This functionality has been rewritten to be more generally compatible. The zoomed help is now centered automatically and can optionally either have a maximum width or fill the screen. It is now also possible to hide elements of the host page that can’t be prevented from displaying on top of the zoomed help.
Embedded help – breadcrumb navigation disabled:
The breadcrumb navigation above the topic title was disabled automatically when WebHelp was embedded in another page. This didn’t save any space so it has been enabled.
Smartphone navigation:
In some instances popups would close on the first tap anywhere on the screen when displaying WebHelp on a smartphone.
Spurious warning messages from browser extensions:
Some users experienced strange warning messages in V4 WebHelp when using browsers with some extensions, including the Adobe Acrobat extension for Chrome. This has been corrected.
Documentation of need for link classes in CHM skins:
When you add your own topic and web links to the page template source code in the CHM skins, for example for automatic display in every topic, you need to include link classes. Otherwise the links will be invalidated if the File Link Fixer is activated. This is now explained in the File Link Fixer help.
Search search term highlights:
In a couple of skins the preset colors of the search term highlights in the Search pane made the highlighted text difficult to read.
Popups, field-level popups and field-level topics:
The header bars were sometimes not high enough.
CHM skins:
When toggles automatically scroll to the top of the page when opening they scrolled a couple of pixels too far for some toggle headers, covering the top of the header or header outline.