We are glad to announce the release of HelpXplain 1.8.0. If your maintenance plan for HelpXplain includes the release date (Nov 23, 2023), this is a free update. The quickest way to find out, is to start HelpXplain and click Help > Check for Update.
Favorites Tool and Format Painter
We have implemented a favorites tool, where you can store objects that you want to re-insert regularly. This is a very comfortable function to store customized objects and have them ready for insertion whenever you need them. Favorites are stored in a hidden Xplain file, which you can open and edit to modify your favorites list.
The second really convenient new function is a Format Painter. It works in the very same way as it does in Help+Manual, or in MS Office.
Minor Changes and bug fixes in v1.8
- New additional numbering steps – with text label attached
- Canvas background: a transparent background option has been added. This option is less important for animated presentations. But if you use HelpXplain to annotate screenshots, it creates transparent PNG files.
- Object Shadows can now be centered as well
- Shadow direction is displayed independently from the object rotation (and keeps its position when rotating the object)
- Function “Fit Slide to Objects” improved: it’s more exact and uses a more detailed positioning analysis.
- Shape text editor: F2 starts edit and ESC cancels edit
- Command line compiler XplainCmd.exe can now export single-slide Xplains to SVG
- HelpXplain can open and edit .SnipX files (more on that later)
- Bug fix: a change of line caps was not restored by the undo function
- Bug fix: undo did not work after image modification with the Skew tool
- Bug fix for multiple instances of HelpXplain (64 bit only)
- Bug fix in script file: when slides were made invisible in HelpXplain, the slide index was mixed up in the output HTML file, causing slide animations not to run.
Download
All updates are available from our download page. Download and install the update over your existing version of HelpXplain.