Premium Pack 6 has now been released and is available for purchase and upgrade. If you purchased or upgraded to version 5 within the last 6 months the upgrade is free and you will receive a free upgrade code shortly, if you have not already received it. Otherwise you can purchase it here or get an upgrade here.

Note on upgrades:
If you have purchased or upgraded to version 5 within the last 6 months your upgrade will be free and you will be getting an email with details in the next few days.

Premium Pack 6 includes:

• Full keyboard operation for unsighted users
• DeltaFTP utility for smart WebHelp updating
• Elimination of separate eWriter Help skins
• Keyword index: filter instead of search
• Comparison slider for images
• Sortable tables in all skins
• Google Fonts in all skins
• Updated V2 skins for eWriter Help
• New Simplicity skin
• Style overhaul with SVG icons

New features of Premium Pack 6:

Full keyboard operation and screen reader compatibility for unsighted users

All the WebHelp/eWriter skins in Premium Pack 6 now support full keyboard navigation and screen reader compatibility for unsighted users. This won’t be visible for regular users (unless they press ESC to activate the skip links) but will be a huge benefit for the blind and those with limited sight.

This was particularly difficult to achieve because of the complexity and special requirements of the WebHelp interface, with its multiple pages in a single layout (TOC, Index, Search and topic content). Unfortunately, automated accessibility scanners have no idea about these factors and it is quite possible that they will tell you that the skins don’t meet their requirements. However, you can rest assured that unsighted users will be very happy with the genuine accessibility they now get as a result of the hundreds of hours of work that went into this.

Elimination of separate eWriter Help skins

All the WebHelp skins are now integrated and also support eWriter Help. There is no more need to use separate skins for WebHelp and eWriter Help.

DeltaFTP utility for updating WebHelp

One of the oldest problems with WebHelp has always been that even small changes in your Help+Manual project require a full re-upload of your entire WebHelp output, because of the difficulty of knowing which files in the complex and deeply structured output have really changed.

The new DeltaFTP command line and GUI tool uses checksums to ensure that only files that have actually changed need to be uploaded. This can massively reduce your uploading time and volume with large WebHelp collections. It comes with both a GUI front end in the Toolbox utility and a command line interface for integration in your automated build system. The current checksum file is stored with the WebHelp on the server and regenerated locally for comparison when you update.

Keyword index: Filter instead of search

Skins with a keyword index now use a fast filter function instead of search. When you enter a term, the filter hides all the index entries that don’t include the term. This is much more intuitive than scrolling through an entire index to find the term.

Comparison slider in all skins

The new comparison slider is supported in all Premium Pack 6 skins, including the CHM skins. It allows you to define two images with identical dimensions that are laid on top of each other with a draggable slider that the user can pull back and forth to compare the images, for example with the color and black and white versions of  an image.

Sortable tables supported in all skins

Sortable tables are now available in all Premium Pack skins. They also work exactly the same in all skins.

Google fonts supported in all skins

All skins except the CHM skins now support Google Fonts. When using the skins for eWriter you can only use the locally hosted fonts version, which is the default. See Google Fonts for details.

Update of the V2 skins with a focus on eWriter Help

Help+Manual’s eWriter Help is now a fully mature help format that is an excellent replacement for CHM Help, particularly with the new viewer that replaces the old Internet Explorer HTML rendering engine with the modern Edge/Chromium engine.

With their user-friendly toolbar and intuitive design, the still popular V2 WebHelp skins are actually a perfect match for eWriter Help. We’ve now simplified and streamlined these skins and further improved their eWriter Help support. We’ve also replaced all the fuzzy old bitmap icons with modern vector versions that look great at all screen resolutions. This also goes for the new Modern Dark and Modern Light variants.

New Simplicity skin with automatic dark mode support

Sometimes you need a skin that puts design in the background and functionality in the foreground — something that is as universally compatible as a page of text.

The new Simplicity skin serves that need, with the added feature that it automatically switches to dark mode in dark mode environments. Theoretically, you can still customize the appearance of Simplicity, but that’s not what it’s designed for. The idea is in the name: just choose it and go.

Responsive images expand to full width on mobile devices

Special CSS in the skins makes images inserted with the mobexpand class expand to full window width on mobile devices and in very narrow browser windows.

You can choose which images to use this with by adding the class to the image in the Help+Manual editor.

General style overhaul of all skins

Before release, we’ve gone through all the existing skins in the pack and made a large number of smaller and larger style improvements, including replacing all the old bitmap icons with modern vector versions.