Archive for category Documentation Authoring
DeepL now available in the USA and Canada!
Posted by tim green in Documentation Authoring, Help+Manual, HelpXplain, Technical Writing, Training on June 19, 2020
Good news for all our US customers: The API license needed to use the DeepL machine translation plugin in Help+Manual and HelpXplain is now also available in the USA for just $5.49 per month.
The license is referred to as DeepL Pro. Here is the DeepL announcement:
DeepL posting on the new license
You can order the new DeepL Pro license on this page:
Order page for the new license
In addition to the monthly fee there is also a charge for translation volume. However, the amounts here are so generous that it would be difficult to exceed $10 per month in total.
Premium Pack 4.0.3 Maintenance Update
Posted by tim green in Browsers, CHM HTML Help, Documentation Authoring, Skins, Software Updates, Utilities on March 23, 2020
We have just updated Premium Pack 4 to version 4.0.3. This now includes the promised V4 Modern Standard set of skins, which are similar to Modern Flexible but with a more basic appearance and functionality. In addition to this it tidies up some color variables and style settings and corrects a couple of small issues reported by users.
How to get the Premium Pack update
You can download and install the updated version with the credentials you received when you purchased. 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 if you do not yet have it.
Skin Updates
- New skin category: The V4 Modern Standard skin category is now included. This is a simple, functional layout similar to Modern Flexible, but without width restriction (always full width), with simple drop-down user-configurable menus in the page header.
- General: Minor corrections in color variables and layout.
- Modern Compact skins: New settings in Skin Options to disable the logo and link buttons.
- Flexible and Magazine skins: The MAX_PAGEWIDTH variable in the General Settings variables section now accepts both pixel (px) and percent (%) values for setting the maximum width of the help in the browser window.
- Magazine skins: Improvement to drop-down menu behavior in phone mode (opening one submenu now closes any other submenu to save space, as in the other skins).
- Flexible skins: Feature images did not move up with the page header in phone mode when hiding the page header, leaving a gap.
- V3 eWriter skins: An error caused a delay on opening WebHelp, during which context calls to the skin would fail.
- V3 eWriter skins: The Minimalist Standard skin included some double variable references that prevented saving changes.
Toolbox utility
- New program icon
- New language files for Dutch for V4 skins
- Minor bug fixes
Office or Home Office? Floating licenses allow both.
Posted by Alexander Halser in Documentation Authoring on March 10, 2020
Floating licenses are a great way to deployHelp+Manual to many users in your organization. A floating license is a concurrent license – it can be used by one person at a time, but is not bound to a particular computer.
With Help+Manual 8, they are not even bound to a local network or departement. The license pool can be shared among all users of an organization, whether they work on site, are in a different location or work from home.
Help+Manual 8.0.1 Update: Slow Editor Solved
Posted by Alexander Halser in Documentation Authoring, Software Updates on February 28, 2020
We are glad to announce the release of Help+Manual 8.0.1 – a small version change but one that includes an important bugfix!
Topic editor was responding slower and slower
The problem occurred with topics that contained one or more lists. It wasn’t apparent at the first look, but editing and selection speed became slower with every text change that was made. Switching to another topic and back solved the problem for a short time. This bug has been addressed and the topic editor is now significantly faster than before.
New Features and bug fixes
- The eWriter eBook viewer has an additional command line option to put the eBook window on top of other windows (“stay-on-top”). Furthermore, the configuration for the eBook menu has an option to specify the color of the application menu button. Instead of just orange, you can select your own color. An optical viewer glitch on very large monitors has been fixed and the eBook viewer app is no longer signed – this is an intentional change, because the signature of the executable gets invalid anyway, when packed with HTML data.
- Screen Capture: the automatic window selection did not work on Windows Terminal Server
- German UI: translation bug in “Online Activation failed” string caused an error
- Link lists to TOC entries that included merged projects at more than 1 level (e.g. a sub-sub-project) did not work in PDF
Download
If you have an older version of Help+Manual installed, you can use the update side by side with an existing installation. Help+Manual 8 is available from our download page:
https://www.helpandmanual.com/downloads.html
Upgrade Bundle Offers extended until March 4th
We offer several upgrade bundles with discounts of more than 40%! The super discounts will be available until March 4, 2020. Please hurry up to get them!
Coming soon: New Screen Capture Tool
Posted by Alexander Halser in Documentation Authoring, Software Updates, Utilities on February 6, 2020
We have implemented a completely new and much more advanced screen capture tool in Help+Manual. This tool supports:
- Captures on multiple monitors with different resolutions
- Multi-part captures (add new captures to the existing capture to create a single image)
- Capture animated HelpXplain screencasts for tutorials – a series of screenshots with animated transitions showing how to do something on the computer screen
Coming soon: PDF Peer Review
Posted by Alexander Halser in Documentation Authoring, PDF, Software Updates on February 2, 2020
You create a PDF file with Help+Manual, including your own comments, and distribute it to your colleagues for additional comments, which they add with their own PDF commenting tool.
When they return the commented PDF to you, you open it with the PDF Review Plugin in Help+Manual and it shows you all the comments side by side with the corresponding topic selected.
Read the rest of this entry »
HelpXplain integration in Help+Manual
Posted by Alexander Halser in Documentation Authoring, HelpXplain on January 21, 2020
We are working on a closer integration of HelpXplain into Help+Manual. Additional print options will be available soon. How about printing all slides in a tabular order? That’s something you can’t do with a video.
Premium Pack 3.50 Maintenance Update
Posted by tim green in Browsers, Documentation Authoring, Scripting, Skins, Software Updates, Utilities, WebHelp on January 20, 2020
This update adds some significant improvements to Google Analytics configuration and handling to the V3 WebHelp skins. It also includes some other small improvements and fixes in the V3 WebHelp skins and the Toolbox utility.
How to get the Premium Pack update
You can download and install the updated version with the credentials you received when you purchased. 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 if you do not yet have it.
V3 WebHelp Skins
- Google Analytics updated from the older gat.js system to the new analytics.js system. This should be more reliable. In addition to this you can now configure inclusion of the WebHelp path, named trackers and the titles of the search and keyword index events in your Google Analytics console. See Google Analytics in the V3 WebHelp skins chapter.
- No Server Mode: Demo links in the header menus failed in some browsers because they used the shorthand // protocol instead of http:// or https://. Browsers have become stricter about resolving links using the shorthand protocol reference since this feature was created.
- No Server Mode: Anchor links in the TOC and keyword index failed as an unintended result of another change in recent updates.
- Permalink tool: The “:” colon character for the port reference was included even when the port was the standard port 80 and was not referenced. This was also caused by a change in browser behavior.
- Smartphone mode: Tables tagged with the phone CSS class were hidden in phone mode because of changes in HM HTML output for tables. This is related to CSS for the X-Tables function that was then applied to other tables.
- X-Tables function: Expanding rows lacked borders in some X-Tables in phone mode. This was also related to changes in Help+Manual HTML output for tables.
Toolbox utility
- Baggage Files — Add File: After adding a Baggage File the column headers of the Baggage Files list were sometimes updated incorrectly.
- Baggage Files — Export File: On some systems the prompt to save the baggage file could appear multiple times when exporting a baggage file.
Premium Pack 3.49 Maintenance Update
Posted by tim green in Documentation Authoring, Scripting, Skins, Software Updates, Utilities, WebHelp on November 29, 2019
We have just released a minor update of the Premium Pack with the improvements and fixes listed below.
How to Get the Premium Pack Update:
You can download and install the updated version with the credentials you received when you purchased. 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 if you do not yet have it.
V3 Skins (WebHelp and eWriter versions)
- Search highlighting: When the topic already containing search highlighting was selected in the search results after a new search the original highlighting was not removed.
- Google Analytics: Occasionally it was possible for the first topic visited to be tracked twice.
- Google Analytics: Ghostery and other similarly aggressive tracking blockers will no longer cause a critical error in WebHelp. These blockers simply kill the tracking function within the Google script instead of actually blocking the outgoing tracking calls, and this disruption of the script needs to be caught so that it does not terminate all other scripts on the page as well.
- Image toggles: In response to many requests, image toggles are now closed by clicking outside the image in desktop mode. Tablet and phone modes remain unchanged.
- Search results: Breadcrumb trail was not displayed in the header of a topic opened from search results (side-effect of a previous search update).
- Anchor links: Anchor links sometimes did not scroll to the target anchor on internal topic links (side-effect of previous search update).
- TOC: If the last item in the sibling chapter before the current chapter was a sub-chapter clicking the Top button would highlight that sub-chapter instead of the actual parent chapter.
- Android devices: Small script error in some pages corrected. This probably had no effect on performance and only showed up as a JS console message.
- EWriter skins: Removed Android and Google Analytics code that didn’t do anything.
Toolbox utility
- Open new project: The current project will now only be closed if you actually open another project. If you cancel, the current project remains open.
- Save Project button: The save project button now turns green when active for better visibility.
HelpXplain officially released!
Posted by Alexander Halser in Documentation Authoring, HelpXplain, Technical Writing, Training on June 22, 2019
We are happy to announce the official release of HelpXplain!
HelpXplain is perfect for slideshows and HowTo screencasts embedded in web pages and technical documentation.
Create animated step-by-step tutorials and quick instructions in minutes instead of hours. The magic is in the method: HelpXplain animates a series of simple screenshots, each of which can be edited or replaced at any time.
HelpXplain can also record multi-page screencasts of programs on your computer screen that run in autoplay mode like a video. Recording and editing them is massively easier and less stressful than trying to create a video!
A free trial version of HelpXplain is available from our download page.
Online orders:
50% off on HelpXplain during Summer 2019!