Posted by Alexander Halser in HelpXplain on February 7, 2022
We are glad to announce the release of HelpXplain 1.6. If your maintenance plan for HelpXplain includes the release date (Feb 7, 2022), this is a free update. The quickest way to find out, is to start HelpXplain and click Help > Check for Update.
This maintenance update fixes a couple of small bugs.
Please download the update and install it over your existing version.
Posted by tim green in Documentation Authoring, Help+Manual, HelpXplain, PDF, Technical Writing, Training, Translation, Uncategorized, User Community on November 20, 2021
EC Software is delighted to welcome Naef Learning, our new full-service reseller for the Swiss market. In addition to selling the full range of EC Software products, Naef Learning backs this up with extensive support, training and maintenance services, plus documentation in German.
Services include:
Posted by Alexander Halser in Help+Manual, HelpXplain on November 18, 2021
We are happy to announce that this year our Black Friday offers start early on November 19 and will last until November 30! This is 12 days of really big savings for you: We’re offering a 30% discount on all products, upgrades and services.
The promotion starts at midnight on November 18 and applies to:
Please note that you can renew your maintenance now even if you currently have an active license with valid maintenance. By renewing before expiration, the maintenance extension will simply extend the previous expiration date and save you 30% compared to a purchase after the Black Friday promotion (or more, if you extend for 2 or more years).
Posted by tim green in Documentation Authoring, Help+Manual, HelpXplain, Software Updates, Technical Writing, Translation on June 8, 2021
We’re delighted to announce that DeepL machine translation is now available free of charge in both Help+Manual and HelpXplain. The new free API developer subscription from DeepL allows you to translate up to 500,000 characters per month at no cost. This will almost always be enough for HelpXplain projects, which typically contain very little text, but it will also cover most Help+Manual projects. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Alexander Halser in HelpXplain on April 15, 2021
We are glad to announce the release of HelpXplain 1.5. If your maintenance plan for HelpXplain includes the release date (Apr 14, 2021), this is a free update. The quickest way to find out, is to start HelpXplain and click Help > Check for Update.
We have implemented custom HTML meta tags for easier social-media integration, added new arrange functions for objects and fixed a technical issue with audio files sometimes not playing on iOS Safari.
Plus, the update supports 13 new languages for the DeepL translation tool, including Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Greek, Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian and Swedish.
Please download the update and install it over your existing version.
Posted by Alexander Halser in Help+Manual, HelpXplain on December 12, 2020
We have updated the eWriter viewer application to version 2.5.0. The eWriter output format is supported by Help+Manual as well as HelpXplain.
Version 2.5 of the viewer does not have any functional changes, but fixes a problem with a Windows 10 system-wide option, that is rarely active but could be active on your end user’s computers. This option is in Region Settings and is called
Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide languages support
If this option was activate on a Windows 10 computer, the eWriter viewer did not work correctly. Content was incorrectly formatted and images were mostly missing. Viewer version 2.5 fixes this problem.
The update is available for download from our website (link after the picture) and soon in the Windows 10 store. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Alexander Halser in Help+Manual, HelpXplain on November 25, 2020
We are pleased to announce our Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers for this year: 30% discount on any of our products between Friday November 27th and Monday November 30th.
This promotion applies to:
Posted by Alexander Halser in HelpXplain, Software Updates, Uncategorized on October 29, 2020
As part of our commitment to continuous improvement, we’ve released an updated version of HelpXplain. If your maintenance plan for HelpXplain includes the release date (Oct 29, 2020), this is a free update. The quickest way to find out, is to start HelpXplain and click Help > Check for Update.
Version 1.4 comes with 2 new features important for social media sharing. It introduces a setting for custom meta tags. Some users have requested we should add additional social media meta tags (such as a Facebook App_Id). The new meta option enables this and a lot more.
The second new feature is in the Publish dialog: an option to mask the viewport of the Xplain. When an Xplain is embedded in another HTML page, the host page normally restricts the viewport so that the view matches the aspect ratio of the Xplain.
Social media sharing, however, often include direct backlinks to the Xplain HTML page directly. In this case, the Xplain runs in a new window or tab of the browser and the window size hardly ever reflects the aspect ratio of the presentation. As a result, some of the slides might become prematurely visible. The mask viewport option blacks out the browser window area which does not belong to the viewport.
The difference between masked and unmasked viewport explained:
Other changes and bug fixes in version 1.4:
This update is included in your maintenance plan! Please download the update and install it over your existing version.
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.
Posted by Alexander Halser in HelpXplain, Software Updates, Technical Writing on March 22, 2020
This is a maintenance and feature update for HelpXplain, which is free for all registered users. Every license of HelpXplain includes 12 months free updates, maintenance and support.
Version 1.3 comes with 2 new features and several small bug fixes. One new feature is an option to restrict the Maximum Image Size in the publish dialog. This is a very useful setting if your Xplain contains many images, in particular large ones. Images may considerably slow down the loading time when viewed in a web browser. If there are too many too large images, memory might not be sufficient. The Maximum Image Size option can reduce the physical size of images during export.
The second new feature is in the DeepL translation function: it now supports Japanese and Chinese (Simplified).
Other changes and bug fixes in version 1.3:
This update is included in your maintenance plan! Please download the update and install it over your existing version.