Archive for category WebHelp
Premium Pack 3.47 Maintenance Update
Posted by tim green in Browsers, Documentation Authoring, Scripting, Skins, Software Updates, WebHelp on April 18, 2019
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.
Help+Manual 7.4.2 Update
Posted by Alexander Halser in CHM HTML Help, Software Updates, WebHelp on January 25, 2019
We are proud to anncounce the immediate availability of Help+Manual 7.4.2. This update ships with several small improvements including:
- Text-to-table function implemented: if you select existing tabbed text in a topic and click Insert Table, it will convert the tabbed text into a table.
- Conditional text: if IFDEF statements were used in text, in particular in tables, a long list of IFDEF options resulted in relatively wide condition tags. The display size of the condition tags has been restricted, a mouse-over hint shows the full list of conditions.
- Images hotspots dialog: entry field for topic ID permits editing (copy and paste)
- Topic editor context menu: when the context menu was opened with the keyboard (e.g. SHIFT+F10), it had some glitches with tables and with the spell checker.
- Topic editor: the scaling message for small images has been improved, it displays % only, no text.
- High resolution displays: problems fixed for OLE objects and embedded images (PDF/HTML/DOC export)
- Double quotation marks could be entered in topic IDs, though they are not valid for file names.
- Task publishing: when creating eWriter eBooks with a publishing task, the specified skin was not used.
- Insert horizontal line: when specifying a custom style, the line not use the specified line height, but rather used the default.
- Spelling checker: support for the latest update of the Spanish OXT dictionary implemented
Please download the update to Help+Manual 7.4.2 from our download page and install over your existing installation of Help+Manual.
HelpXplain Animated Infographics Beta Program
Posted by tim green in Browsers, Documentation Authoring, HelpXplain, Software Updates, Technical Writing, User Community, Utilities, WebHelp on November 16, 2018
Try out HelpXplain now by joining the beta program
HelpXplain is an exciting new program from EC Software that takes the pain out of making HowTo tutorials and other animated infographics for the web. You can see some examples and join the beta program here:
HelpXplain takes the pain out of making HowTo tutorials
HelpXplain can make a whole range of different web-based infographics, but for documentation authors its ability to make animated HowTo tutorials is nothing short of revolutionary. Instead of trying to get every step of a “performance” right you just make a series of screenshots that the program then links together in an editable screencast with an animated, editable mouse cursor. Let me put what this means this into perspective from the point of view of a documentation author.
From typewriter to word processor
I’ve been working with HelpXplain for a while now while writing the help for it. For me as a help author there is one aspect of it that stands out from all the others. It reminds me of the huge aha experience I had the very first time I saw a word processor. The one thought I had was: “I am never going to have to retype anything ever again.” That was huge. For writers of all kinds, it is still 99.9% percent of the benefit of using a word processor instead of a typewriter. Everything else that modern writing tools do is nice to have, but all those additional functions are still nothing compared to the ability to edit and change your text without retyping everything.
From video screencasts to HelpXplain
HelpXplain is the first time that I have had a similar experience as a documentation author. It is really comparable. Like everyone else, I experimented with using video screencast tools like Camtasia and Captivate. Like everyone else outside of very large, very rich companies, I abandoned them very quickly. They only make sense if you have a huge amount of time to work on little video tutorials, and if someone is willing to pay you a reasonable hourly rate for that time. Both of those things are simply unrealistic expectations for most technical writers working in today’s market. It just doesn’t happen. You’re not going to have that much time to work on a tutorial, and even if you do nobody is going to pay you for it.
Video: When you had to do it just right
But that’s not the only problem with video screencast tools: They are very stressful and thus unpleasant to work with, because you have to get everything right. If you make a mistake while making the video you have to start again. And again. And again. And again. And if you ever need to add something you have to remake the entire screencast. Again. I found this so unpleasant that I would do pretty much anything to avoid having to make video tutorials even if I did have the time and reasonable payment for them. To be honest, I would probably even pay to not have to make them.
HelpXplain: Work at your own speed, correct later at leisure
That is why HelpXplain is such a revelation for me, personally, quite separate from the fact that this is an EC Software product. Once you get the hang of it, making little HowTo tutorials is literally as easy as making a series of screenshots — which is what we are doing anyway. And it is completely stress-free: I don’t have to get my timing right and I don’t have to worry about needing to set up everything right. Between screenshots I can take my time to make any changes I want in the program. And not only that: If I ever need to change or add something I can do that at any time, without having to redo the whole thing.
HelpXplain New Dialog
There is no doubt that making tutorials with HelpXplain is radically faster and more pleasant than struggling with a video screencast tool. In fact, for myself, I could say that it is infinitely faster, because with HelpXplain I am actually making the tutorials, whereas with video screencast tools I wouldn’t be making them at all. Not in the real world.
HelpXplain can do a lot more. But if you’re a documentation author, taking the pain out of making HowTo tutorials for documentation simply makes it a must-have.
Tim Green
eWriter 1.2 released – Free HTML-to-eBook Converter
Posted by Alexander Halser in Software Updates, Utilities, WebHelp on August 27, 2018
eWriter is a converter application to turn HTML pages into a self-contained Windows executable. This output format is completely integrated into Help+Manual as eWriter eBooks. The eWriter converter application is the free stand-alone version.
About eWriter
eWriter creates portable websites in a single compact Windows file with an integrated server and viewer. eWriter “books” can be viewed on any Windows device, even on old and outdated versions of Windows. They support direct contextual references from your applications to display specific pages and to scroll to anchors on your pages. Unlike a normal website, repeated calls to an eWriter book will all open in the same window.
How to create an eBook with eWriter
This version 1.2 update now includes the option to create data-only eBooks that can be opened with a separate viewer – similar to the functionality in Help+Manual.
Download
You can download eWriter stand-alone edition directly from our website:
https://www.helpandmanual.com/ewriter.html
Premium Pack 3.45 Update
Version 3.45 of the Help+Manual Premium Pack add-on adds a new set of V3 WebHelp and EWriter skins using the popular Samurai Red color theme and corrects some minor 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.
New Samurai Red Skins
Changes and Fixes
More information
See the Premium Pack information page for general details and purchase information and the Premium Pack web-based documentation for full instructions.
Premium Pack 3.42/3.43 Maintenance Update
Posted by tim green in Browsers, Scripting, Software Updates, WebHelp on February 12, 2018
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
V3 Skins Maintenance Update
Extended support for the full version of the Zoom web search indexer
More information
See the Premium Pack information page for general details and purchase information and the Premium Pack web-based documentation for full instructions.
Premium Pack 3.40 — SVG Icons Edition
Posted by tim green in Software Updates, WebHelp on October 30, 2017
This update to the Help+Manual Premium Pack add-on adds replaceable SVG sprite icons to the user interface. It also adds a few refinements to the V3 skins and the Toolbox utility, tidies up some of the CSS and squashes a couple of small bugs (crunch crunch crunch). It is a recommended update for all Premium Pack users.
How to Get the Premium Pack Update:
SVG Sprite Icons
V3 Skins Maintenance Update
Toolbox utility maintenance update
More information
See the Premium Pack information page for general details and purchase information and the Premium Pack web-based documentation for full instructions.
A great example of integrated WebHelp from Scooter Software
Posted by Alexander Halser in User Community, WebHelp on April 27, 2017
We recently worked with Scooter Software to better integrate their online help into their website.
Scooter makes BeyondCompare, the best multi-file comparison tool on the market. We use BeyondCompare ourselves to synchronize and merge source code changes and Scooter uses Help+Manual for producing their own documentation.
A WebHelp version of BeyondCompare’s documentation is also available online. The old version didn’t match their beautiful Steampunk theme, which we really love. That was a pity, because Help+Manual is extremely powerful when it comes to embedding help content into your website.
This has changed in their gorgeous new version, however: Starting with a draft of a new WebHelp skin that matches the design of their web pages, the web designers at Scooter then fine-tuned the skin and fully integrated it in the host pages. The result is a beautiful example of what is possible with Help+Manual with just a little extra tweaking:
http://www.scootersoftware.com/v4help/
Help+Manual 7.2 Maintenance Update
Posted by Alexander Halser in Software Updates, WebHelp on November 22, 2016
We are glad to announce the release of Help+Manual 7.2 ! After v7.1 earlier this year, this update is another big “minor” update that is free for all 7.xx users. Plus, there is an important update for the Premium Pack to version 3.20!
XSS vulnerability in Webhelp fixed
Version 7.2 fixes an XSS vulnerability in Help+Manual’s Webhelp output (standard skins only). It was possible to inject arbitrary Javascript commands by creating a fake url that pointed to a Webhelp system. Premium Pack skins were not affected by this problem. We strongly recommend to update your version and re-publish any Webhelp output that is placed on a public web server.
New features and modifications
- The Keyword Index Tool (available in Pro/Server only) has an XML export and import function.
- PDF/manual designer: the options page for the PDF keyword index contains a new setting “Avoid duplicate page numbers in Index”. This option is on by default and will avoid printing the same page number multiple times if the same keyword occurs in two or more consecutive topics that happen to start on the same PDF page.
- Program Options: configuration setting for temporary compiler files (CHM, eBooks) implemented. This can improve compilation speed when the help project is located on a server share with a slow connection.
- Projects saved in Dropbox are now permitted (uncompressed HMXP projects are opened read-only, compressed HMXZ projects are editable with warning).
- Webhelp/CHM/eBooks: when doing a HTML-based export, H&M checks for duplicate IDs (anchors, image, table, toggle, videos) and reports a duplicate ID in the compiler log. Also implemented: <p> tags with “Normal” style now have a dedicated class name.
- Project Report / Styles Report: this report always reported code examples as individually formatted text (they of course are). Now, the “Code Example” style is reported as individual formatting only if there are more changes than font color and font style (bold/italic/underline). Other styles are reported as individual formatting if there are more changes than just the font style (bold/italic/underline).
- Improved multí-monitor handling: Dialog windows are positioned relative to the main window – this improves multiple instances on different monitors. Please note that after the switch to version 7.2, the initial dialog window positions might be wrong on your computer because of this change. This automatically fixes itself when the dialog windows are repositioned.
- Replace images with copy & paste: when the editor selection marks exactly 1 image or toggle image and you hit CTRL+V or click Paste, H&M asks to replace the picture and saves it under the original file name. This makes it easier to update screenshots with copy & paste, for all properties of the image (caption, zoom, tags, hotspots, etc) are kept intact.
- Spelling check: updated format of OpenOffice 4 spell checker dictionaries is supported.
- Topic options: the drop-down field for the topic anchor (available for TOC items) can now be manually edited, it is possible to enter a non-existing anchor. If a TOC entry points to a non-existing anchor, the topic anchor field shows a red background to indicate the missing anchor.
- PDF/print: word break options for slashes and backslashes / \ were changed – the slash and backslash does no longer permit a break after. Example: this line does/not break after “does/”.
- ePUB cover images: IPP images are now supported as ePUB cover images. If an IPP image contains text objects (text, callouts, buttons) with variables, the variables are replaced and the image is repainted before it gets exported.
- TidyXML: the XML topic parser is prepared for reading a more compact and more translation-friendly XML format that we are going to implement in the next update after 7.2. More on this new feature in a later post on this blog!
- Windows EXE eBooks: plenty of new features!
New features in EWriter eBooks
H&M’s output format “EWriter eBooks” (self-executable eBooks for Windows) is getting more and more popular as a replacement format for CHM files. We have implemented new features to make it more flexible:
- Separate viewer and data files: Help+Manual can optionally output the eBook data and the executable viewer separately. If a help system consists of several books, this saves space and makes it easier to update the data.
- The eBook viewer has larger menu button and larger icons for systems with 120, 144 and 192 dpi. The buttons switch automatically on high-resolution monitors.
- New shortcut: CTRL+0 changes zoom back to 100%.
- The default extension for topic file names was always “.htm”. Now the eBooks take the default extension from the Webhelp configuration.
- eBook menu configuration: when entering a new entry and changing it to “Menu Divider”, the entry kept its previous caption, which resulted in a menu text in the final EXE eBook, not a divider.
Bug fixes
- Webhelp standard skins: XXS vulnerability fixed
- Find & Replace: partial replacement of images names could run into an endless loop.
- PDF: page referrer icons were too large on Windows systems > 96 dpi. Furthermore, the page icon is now tied to the preceeding text link and cannot accidentially break to a new line.
- PDF: when a nested snippet was used inside a snippet that was placed on a hard-coded manual page, the nested snippet used style mode “Screen” and not style mode “Print”.
- PDF, table printing: if a table with visible borders was nested within another table, the last cell border at the bottom of inner table was not painted correctly.
- HTML (all HTML-based publishing formats): if an image with hotspots was placed on a paragraph with hanging indent, the hotspots were set off by the indent.
- Help context numbers > 2147483647 were not exported to Webhelp and EXE eBooks.
- Dropdown toggles: if the toggle text/heading was made up of multiple styles, parts of the toggle did not work.
- Variables in the field <%TOPIC_DESCRIPTION%> were not resolved.
- Team Foundation Server: H&M now saves the password.
- Webhelp, full-text search: when compiling Webhelp from the command line with multiple instances of Help+Manual, all running at the same time, it was possible that the full-text seach index was not created.
- SVG images: text drawing problem with overlapping text fixed.
- Bugfix in Winhelp (.hlp) import for damaged images, that could crash the import.
- AuthorIT import: help context numbers were wrong.
Major Premium Pack 3.2 Update
Together with Help+Manual 7.2 we have also released version 3.20 of the Premium Pack add-on. This is a major upgrade with a number of powerful new features and improvements. These include a WordPress plugin, support for Google Web Fonts, advanced support for developers and new ways of displaying tables and images on mobile devices.
Download
Please download the update to Help+Manual 7.2 from our download page and install over your existing installation of Help+Manual.
Premium Pack 3 and Help+Manual 7.0.8 Released
Posted by tim green in Browsers, CHM HTML Help, Scripting, Software Updates, WebHelp on December 10, 2015
We are proud to announce the release of the all-new Premium Pack 3 with advanced responsive skins. This is accompanied by Help+Manual 7.0.8 with new features to support the new skins and a set of demo Premium Pack 3 skins. Help & Manual 7.0.7 or higher is required to use the new responsive skins.
See the Premium Pack product page for more details on Premium Pack 3 and visit our online store to purchase.
Premium Pack 3: Responsive. Fast. Embedded. WebHelp.
A single WebHelp site now works smoothly on desktop, tablet and smartphone browsers, with an optimized user interface for each device type. Even large TOCs and keyword indexes are handled well on smartphones. And browsing has been optimized for lightning-fast topic loading. These skins represent the first iteration of our new online help format, which we call WebHelp 3. This has been made possible by a number of new technologies that we have been working on for the last eighteen months.
Key Features
- Fully responsive – create one WebHelp site for desktop, tablet and phone browsers
- Frameless topics – no more index.html layout page, the topic pages are your pages and their names are your URLs
- Embedded WebHelp – embed your help in existing web pages with a snippet of code like a YouTube video
- Field-level popups – display formatted popups from your help in your own web pages with simple links
- Responsive X-tables – add a single setting to data tables to make them reformat automatically on mobile devices
- Local WebHelp – deploy WebHelp locally without a web browser, even for Google Chrome and Internet Explorer
- Fast browsing – highly optimized topic loading for extremely fast browsing
- Scalable – user-adjustable text size for the best possible user experience.
Premium Pack Toolbox Configuration Utility
The Premium Pack now also comes with a configuration utility with direct help for every configuration setting when you select it. This also works with older Premium Pack skins and comes with a large number of additional advanced features for power users. For example, you can add features to skins that are normally only available in your project settings. And you can edit your templates and baggage files directly in your favorite code and graphics editors.
Help+Manual 7.0.8
Help+Manual 7.0.8 comes with a set of demo Premium Pack 3 skins that you can try out, plus support for the new features in the Premium Pack 3 skins. Help+Manual 7.0.7 or higher is required for using the responsive skins in Premium Pack 3.