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.

HelpXplain 1.2

The most important new feature in this version is the eWriter output format. HelpXplain now creates eWriter eBooks out of the box. An eWriter eBook is a compressed single file that can easily be copied, emailed and can be viewed with the eWriter Viewer, available as a free app in Microsoft Store.

A second important change has been made to the PDF export. It supports multiple slides per page and offers a quality setting for the slide pictures.

eWriter Export in HelpXplain

New PDF Options in HelpXplain

Other changes and bug fixes in version 1.2:

• Screen capture bug fix: full-screen capture on secondary monitors did not work
• Screen capture bug fix: in free region capture mode, the screen capture tool silently crashed if one single-clicked outside the selection area.
• Bugfix: ribbon menu for fill was enabled for text objects, though text objects are always transparent
• Spotlight objects with follow-cursor (like inserted with screencast): when a text object was placed left of the screenshot, the spotlight was in the wrong position
• eWriter export format implemented
• favicon.ico added to output folder (also for the eWriter output, which picks up the icon)
• DeepL: Portuguese language supported
• Problem with invalid fill images fixed
• Publish Dialog: skin selection drop-down list has a scrollbar
• Mouse-over action “Change to full opacity” was always reset
• Improved error handling for Image Tools
• When inserting (new) images, extra large images are physically reduced to a maxium of 3000 x 2000 px.
• SVG images are normally exported with an <object> tag (= animated SVGs supported, but not clickable). If the SVG image has a click action, it is exported with an <img> tag (= clickable, but not animated)
• Slide #number is no longer displayed in document title
• Lines with a dashed stroke were rendered es solid lines in HTML
• When the caption of a slide was being edited, pressing the DELETE key asked to delete the slide.
• Publish as PDF / GIF / Images: an optional page scale factor makes the exported slides larger or smaller
• Full-screen mode on secondary monitors: when HelpXplain was running full screen on a secondary monitor, it did not save the window position and reverted to the default monitor the next time it was opened.

Download

This update is included in your maintenance plan! Please download the update and install it over your existing version.

We recently equipped the Webdesign division of the school Instituut Sint-Maria in Antwerp, Belgium, with HelpXplain. One of the students’ first projects was a promotional website for Barcelona, created entirely with HelpXplain.

Here (drum roll!) are the first results!

We are proud and happy to share this student project with you:

Joris

  Read the rest of this entry »

It’s less than three weeks that we released HelpXplain and we are already working on the first feature update.

One of the new features is separate styles for callouts and other shapes. In the current version, all shapes have the same default fill and outline. But callouts are usually different, so we separated them from the rest of the shapes.

The style settings in HelpXplain globally change the look of all objects of this kind in a presentation:

The second new feature are animated spotlights. An animated spotlight darkens the slide and leaves an unobscured area in the middle. This area can be animated with special spotlight animations.

What can you use spotlights for? Read the rest of this entry »

We are glad to announce the first update after the official release of HelpXplain!

HelpXplain is perfect for slideshows and HowTo screencasts embedded in web pages and technical documentation.

This is a free maintenance update that fixes several small bugs that have been reported by users during the last 8 days. Bug fixes in no particular order:

• Problem with offline activation fixed
• Several UI errors fixed
• Errors in online help fixed
• Optical glitches in object tree and high-dpi monitors fixed
• Optical glitches in German UI fixed
• Project Properties, Custom Scripts edit field: copy to clipboard with CTRL+C did not work
• When changing the slide transition to “Show”, it was not permanently saved and was back to “Pan, rotate, zoom” the next time the Xplain project was opened.
• Inserting SVG images: if the SVG has a defines size larger than the slide, it is automatically reduced to slide size.
• Animation Preview: when the animation preview for a slide was running, it was possible to manipulate objects currently being animated, possibly resulting in access violations.
• Changing background size could have caused an error when the background was too large.
• After changes to the publishing skin or to the project properties, the Save button did not immediately become enabled.
• Duplication of an existing slide did reset the project configuration
• Object tree: images now also display their internal file name for easier identification
• Several bugs fixed when creating image sliders:
  • The picture on the first slide started with the name “Image2” instead of “Image1”.
  • If an image was deleted from disk between image selection and the creation of a slider, HelpXplain raised an error.
  • If the images on the slider were small, the default slide size was still 960 x 540 px
  • Taking the aspect ratio of the first image on the slider did not work if images were cropped

To install the update, please download the trial version of HelpXplain from our download page and install it over your current version, to update.