Help+Manual News

Archive for category Scripting

Premium Pack 4.4.0 Update

Sandcastle Tidy, Caret Browsing, Update Skin Config Tool

We are happy to announce the release of Premium Pack 4.4.0 with three new features and a wide range of other improvements and fixes. Sandcastle Tidy puts your Microsoft Sandcastle documentation import fully under the control of the project stylesheet. Caret browsing support for tabbed navigation in the TOC and header has been added to the V3 and V4 skins. The Update Skin Config tool for transferring your settings from old to new skins has been significantly improved, now showing you only the settings in your old skin that are different from those in the new skin.

How to get the Premium Pack update

You can download and install the updated version with the download link and personal installation password you received when you purchased. If you no longer have these details please contact support@ec-software.com and we will help you out. See the Premium Pack product page for more details on Premium Pack 4 and visit our online store to purchase if you do not yet have it.

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Premium Pack 4.3.0 Update: SharePoint Embedding

We have just updated Premium Pack 4 to version 4.3, with a couple of major improvements and some minor fixes and fine-tuning.

SharePoint embedding

The main change in this update is support for embedding WebHelp in SharePoint using the V3 and V4 skins. SharePoint administrators can now host WebHelp created with these skins on SharePoint site pages. This will also work on the SharePoint iOS and Android apps on tablets and smartphones. See Embedding in MS SharePoint in the Premium Pack documentation for details and instructions.

How to get the Premium Pack update

You can download and install the updated version with the download link and personal installation password you received when you purchased. If you no longer have these details please contact support@ec-software.com and we will help you out. See the Premium Pack product page for more details on Premium Pack 4 and visit our online store to purchase if you do not yet have it.

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Premium Pack 4.2.1 Maintenance Update

We have just updated Premium Pack 4 to version 4.2.1. This is a minor maintenance update that adds one important new feature to the Toolbox utility, which can now edit HMXR style repository projects as well as Help+Manual projects and skins.

How to get the Premium Pack update

You can download and install the updated version with the download link and personal installation password you received when you purchased. If you no longer have these details please contact support@ec-software.com and we will help you out. See the Premium Pack product page for more details on Premium Pack 4 and visit our online store to purchase if you do not yet have it.

Main changes and new features

The main change in this otherwise minor update is the addition of the ability of Toolbox to edit style repository projects (.hmxr). This makes it possible to use the new import/export styles tool on these projects as well. You can also use the other topics tools on these projects.

In addition to this, it was found that Help+Manual continues to maintain outdated XSD schema files in some old HMXP projects. This happens when backup or other tools are used that update the XSD file timestamp to the current date, which prevents HM from identifying an outdated file. When Toolbox encounters XSD validation errors it now automatically backdates the XSD, forcing HM to update it next time the project is updated.

Toolbox changes

  • Support for editing HMXR projects
  • Check for read-only TOC and topic and files in otherwise accessible projects
  • Add/Remove prefixes: Error if a topic ID was shorter than the prefix
  • XSD validation: Force Help+Manual to update outdated XSD schema file

Skin changes

  • The variable for the “Copied!” text in the new code sample boxes was inactive in some skins.

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Premium Pack 4.2 Update

We have just updated Premium Pack 4 to version 4.2.0. This is a significant update with several new features, along with a number of minor fixes and corrections.

How to get the Premium Pack update

You can download and install the updated version with the download link and personal installation password you received when you purchased. If you no longer have these details please contact support@ec-software.com and we will help you out. See the Premium Pack product page for more details on Premium Pack 4 and visit our online store to purchase if you do not yet have it.

Main changes and new features

Version 4.2 includes a general overhaul of a lot of code, also for the update to the latest version of jQuery. Because of this, please don’t try to backport this version to older skins — use the new skins instead. It also brings three major new features:

Code Sample Box

All skins now include a Code Sample Box feature. This enables you to add programming code samples to your documentation in a box with a Copy to Clipboard link that copies the sample code directly to the Windows Clipboard. This even works in CHM files.

Import/Export Styles

The Toolbox utility has a new Import/Export Styles feature, with which you can import individual text, paragraph and table styles to Help+Manual projects from other projects and style files created with the tool. (In Help+Manual itself you can only replace an entire project stylesheet with another one.)

Validate XML against XSD

The Toolbox utility now validates XML against the XSD schema file included with every Help+Manual project. This prevents the accidental creation of invalid HM XML when working on the XML source code, for example with the search and replace tool.

jQuery Update

All skins have been updated to the latest 3.6 version of jQuery. This includes quite a lot of low-level code changes in the scripts, so please don’t try to backport the changes in these skins to older versions. Use the new skins instead.

Toolbox Utility Changes and Fixes

  • XML validation against XSD: This checks all projects and skins you open and prevents the creation of invalid XML (see above).
  • Import/Export Styles tool: Import individual styles to Help+Manual projects from other projects or style files exported with the tool.
  • Normalize Styles: Corrected an error that could incorrectly reset Bold/Underline/Italics formatting when processing some projects.
  • Edit Preferences: A message is now displayed in Edit Preferences explaining that all current projects and skins need to be closed to change some options.
  • Complex Search & Replace: On some projects the search and replace tool could only be used once if the Autosave feature was active.
  • Complex Search & Replace: An error could be generated when replacing in invalid topic files because they were not automatically excluded from searches.
  • TOC \Maps folder in uncompressed HMXP projects: Toolbox would crash silently on opening an HMXP project if there were non-TOC files or invalid secondary TOC files in the \Maps folder.
  • Plus a number of cosmetic changes, like showing a red explanation that you need to close all projects to be able to edit the disabled preferences in Edit > Preferences.

V3 and V4 WebHelp Skins

  • Embedded Help: A new option enables you to leave the WebHelp header visible when opening help embedded in another web page.
  • Local without Web Server: Changes in the security features of current browsers caused a number of errors when using these skins in local mode without a web server. These errors have been corrected, along with others caused by some Google Analytics features not being disabled in local mode.

All V3 and V4 Skins

  • Image toggle close mode: The Click Inside option for closing image toggles caused an error in some skins.
  • Image toggles: Image toggles were inactive when published with Help+Manual 7.
  • Search results: Some V3 WebHelp and eWriter skins showed only the project title in the search results instead of the topic title. The incorrect topic title was sometimes shown in the search results in the Advanced skins.

All Skins

  • A potential cross-site scripting vulnerability has been corrected in the Zoom Search component. The vulnerability was only available when date range searching was activated. This is only supported the full, standalone version of Zoom, so it was not an issue in WebHelp generated with the version in Help+Manual.

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Premium Pack 3.50 Maintenance Update

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.

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Premium Pack 3.49 Maintenance Update

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.

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Premium Pack 3.47 Maintenance Update

We are happy to announce the release of version 3.47 of the Help+Manual Premium Pack add-on. This is a minor maintenance update. It includes fixes for the issues described below in the V3 skins and the Toolbox utility. All other skins remain unchanged.

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.

V3 WebHelp and eWriter Skins

  • Anchors with keywords: Selecting anchors with keywords in the keyword index caused a JavaScript error and did not open a toggle associated with the anchor. This was a side-effect of the Google Analytics query feature added in 3.46.
  • Non-server mode: The optional q=search+term addition to the URL for Google Analytics for search and keyword index clicks added in 3.46 is now automatically disabled when V3 WebHelp is accessed without a web server. This caused errors in non-server mode and cannot be used there anyway.
  • Non-server mode: In some cases the use of a file name other than index.html for the main WebHelp file caused errors when viewing V3 WebHelp without a web server. This has been corrected, but use of index.html is still strongly recommended.
  • Search highlighting: In some configurations search terms were not correctly highlighted in the found topic pages.
  • Popups: Popups can now also be closed with the ESC key.
  • Popups: The title font from the popup title bar is no longer applied to the entire popup (the main font from the project is used).
  • Popups: Automatic positioning and sizing of popups have been improved.
  • Port reference in permalinks: The port reference is now included in permalinks if the web server is not running on the standard port 80.

Toolbox Utility

  • Editing warnings: Additional checks and warnings have been implemented to help prevent simultaneous editing of skins and projects in Help+Manual and Toolbox.
  • Non-active options: The program would exit if the user tried to activate a non-active option without first setting a value for the option (e.g. in HTML Options or Project Options).
  • Add Build Option: The Add Build Option tool in the Edit menu was not active in projects that did not yet have any build options defined.
  • Delete user-defined variable: Deleting the last user-defined variable in a skin or project did not refresh the variables list and the deleted variable was still displayed.

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Premium Pack 3.46 Maintenance update

Version 3.46 of the Help+Manual Premium Pack add-on is a general maintenance update including fixes for minor issues and some fine-tuning improvements.

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.

Toolbox utility

  • The Normalize Styles tool failed to identify some styles as paragraph styles and incorrectly reported that the style could not be found. The affected styles were styles based on other styles without explicit paragraph attributes of their own.
  • Some HM projects converted from Help+Manual 4 would cause Toolbox to crash and close when they were opened.
  • The Add/Remove Topic ID Prefixes function failed without completing on some projects with an unusual combination of settings.
  • The Rename Variable function didn’t update the display of the new variable name in some projects.

V3 WebHelp Skins

  • In the layout tables function the style name for identifying layout tables has been changed from layout-table to layout_table. This was necessary because you need to define a project style for this and Help+Manual no longer permits the definition of style names with dashes in the project stylesheet. Old projects using the hyphenated style name will still work; you just can’t create new styles with hyphens. The tap images function is not affected because the style for that does not need to be defined in Help+Manual.
  • Focus is now automatically set to the search input field in the Search pane whenever it is displayed.
  • User-defined menus in the page header would sometimes extend beyond the edge of the page.
  • If you are using Google Analytics, topic pages opened from search results or the keyword index will now include the search text or index keyword in the tracking reference. For example, if the user searched for red widgets or used the red widgets index keyword and clicked on the Introduction topic the tracking reference will be introduction.html?q=red+widgets (?q= is the standard reference for search terms in GA). You can turn this off with the new URL_QTRACKER configuration variable.
  • If you are using a non-standard port (anything except port 80) for your web server the permalink function will now include the port reference in the permalink to prevent the URL from being invalid.

V3 eWriter Skins

  • Focus is now automatically set to the search input field in the Search pane whenever it is displayed.
  • User-defined menus in the page header would sometimes extend beyond the edge of the page.

V2 Webhelp/eWriter skins

  • Focus is now automatically set to the search input field in the Search pane whenever it is displayed.
  • The Open topic in a new tab function displayed an incorrect message that the topic is already open in a new tab on some touchscreen Windows devices (MS Surface and similar).

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New share buttons on our news blog

Today we implemented the social media plugin Shariff, which enables website users to share their favorite content without compromising their privacy.

Facebook, Google+ and Twitter supply official sharing code snippets. These original share buttons automatically transmit data of your visitors to the social network sites as soon as they visit your website. Visitors do not even need to click on a share button for this and therefore have no choice, if they want their data to be sent.

The German computer magazine CT has developed Shariff (/ˈʃɛɹɪf/), a social media plugin that fulfills the strict data protection laws in Germany and the European Union.

For more information about the Shariff project check out the original GitHub project page.

These social media buttons below are for your convenience – a single click will share this post to your favorite social media site. But as long as you don’t click any of these buttons, they won’t leak visitor information to 3rd party sites. In other words: Facebook has no idea that you are currently viewing this page. If we used the regular Facebook share button, they would know.

Enjoy your privacy while reading this blog!

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Premium Pack 3.42/3.43 Maintenance Update

Versions 3.42/3.43 of the Help+Manual Premium Pack add-on is primarily a maintenance update. It is recommended for all Premium Pack users because it corrects several small but potentially annoying issues.

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.

3.43 Additional Corrections

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  • Incorrect comma-separated skip words in search options (Skins and Toolbox)
    Due to an old bug in Help+Manual itself, some skins contained comma-separated excluded words in the search settings. The WebHelp indexer ignored these skip words. This has been corrected to space separated in all skins. Toolbox will now automatically check for and correct this setting when any skin or Help+Manual project is opened.
  • Popup help window was exclusive (Toolbox)
    An error in 3.42 made the popup help window for settings exclusive so that you needed to close it to move to another setting.
  • Editor not found check (Toolbox)
    Toolbox now checks whether your selected editors for code files and graphics have become unavailable before using them.
  • Configuration variable validity checking (Toolbox)
    The performance of the validity checks for non Premium Pack settings and non-configured settings has been improved.
  • WebHelp templates in CHM skins (V2 CHM skins)
    The unnecessary WebHelp templates have been disabled in the CHM skins so that they can no longer be accidentally selected in Toolbox.

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V3 Skins Maintenance Update

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  • Add/Remove Topic ID Prefixes function (Toolbox)
    In some cases, the Add/Remove Topic ID Prefixes function would hang and fail to complete, particularly with older projects. This has been corrected. The function now also aborts with a warning if a topic containing invalid XML code is encountered and checks whether duplicate topic IDs would be created when removing topic ID prefixes.
  • Configuration help window too far on top (Toolbox)
    The popup help window for variable configuration etc. was displayed on top of all programs on the Windows screen. It is now only on top of Toolbox itself.
  • Variables to adjust navigation tab positions (V3 skins)
    The V3 skins now have new variables in the TOC, Index and Search section which allow you to fine-adjust the vertical position of the navigation tabs. This can be necessary if you change the base font of your project, which can change the physical size of the relative rems units used in the layout.
  • Bug in Edge browser when viewing WebHelp without a web server (V3 WebHelp skins)
    The V3 WebHelp skins allow you to view WebHelp locally, without a web server. This was not possible in the new Microsoft Edge browser in Windows 10 due to a bug in Edge. A workaround has now been added to deal with this bug.
  • Scrolling to anchors (V3 skins)
    The scroll position of an external link targeting an anchor could be wrong if the width of the navigation pane had been previously changed by the user, or if the help window was narrow enough so that the navigation pane overlaps the topic pane. Scrolling now waits for completion of topic positioning.
  • Multiple clicks on keyword index entries and search results (V3 skins)
    A second click on a keyword index or search results topic link caused the breadcrumb trail to change to >No TOC entry for this topic<. This was a side-effect of another recent correction.
  • Multiple clicks on search results – visual side-effects (V3 skins)
    In some cases, multiple clicks on the same search results topic link could make part of the breadcrumb navigation to become progressively more transparent and less legible. Another side effect of this was that it was sometimes necessary to click twice on a search result to display highlights on the found search terms in the topic.
  • Overlapping TOC scrollbar (V3 skins)
    In the EWriter skins and in the WebHelp skins when displayed in Internet Explorer the vertical scrollbar in the table of contents and the keyword index panes sometimes overlapped its border slightly at the top and bottom.
  • JavaScript warning in search results (V3 skins)
    In some configurations it was possible for the warning text that JavaScript must be on to view the help to be displayed in the context excerpt text for topics in the search results.
  • Opening toggles for search results (CHM skins)
    A change in Windows stopped toggles on the page from opening to show the highlighted search items in CHM files when jumping to a topic from the CHM search results.

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Extended support for the full version of the Zoom web search indexer

[showhide type=”zoomsupport” more_text=”Click for details” less_text=”Click to hide”]If you are using the full version of the Zoom web indexer from Wrensoft instead of the integrated version included with Help+Manual you can now use the advanced features listed below with both the V3 skins and the V2 WebHelp skins. In addition to this the layout of the search pages in all skins has been reworked and improved.

With the exception of thumbnail images these features are also supported in Help+Manual’s standard skins, but just “as is”. They have now been explicitly integrated in the layout of the V2 and V3 WebHelp skins, where some of them did not appear correctly before because of the customized layouts.

  • Thumbnail images
    You can associate images with individual topics to be displayed as a thumbnail next to the topic listing in the search results. This needs to be configured in your project to associate images with your topics. See the V3 WebHelp skins and the V2 WebHelp skins topics for instructions.
  • Autocomplete
    The full version of Zoom features an autocomplete feature that shows a list of terms included in the help as the user is typing in the search box.
  • Categories
    You can assign categories to your topics and search will then allow you to filter your search results by these categories.
  • Date range search
    Restrict the search results to topics with dates falling within a specific range (desktop browsers only).
  • Recommended links
    Display predefined links to external web pages for specific search keywords, optionally with a thumbnail image sourced from the web page.
  • Search optimization
    Further enhance your search results with weighting, filtering, synonyms, recommended links

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More information

See the Premium Pack information page for general details and purchase information and the Premium Pack web-based documentation for full instructions.

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