Posted by Alexander Halser in HelpXplain, Software Updates, Utilities, WebHelp on October 17, 2019
eWriter is a converter application to turn HTML pages into a self-contained Windows executable or eBook. This output format is integrated into Help+Manual as well (and will soon become available in HelpXplain). The eWriter converter application is the free stand-alone version.
The viewer for eWriter eBooks is now a stand-alone app. We have completely rebuilt the viewer app with this version and made it (optionally) available as a separate installer. The viewer looks more modern, but more important is the new code base which it is built on: it is more or less platform-independent.
The eWriter Viewer app is currently available in 32 and 64 bit versions, and it is listed in the Microsoft Store:
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.
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.
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:
Please download the update to Help+Manual 7.4.2 from our download page and install over your existing installation of Help+Manual.
Posted by tim green in Browsers, Documentation Authoring, HelpXplain, Software Updates, Technical Writing, User Community, Utilities, WebHelp on November 16, 2018
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
You can download eWriter stand-alone edition directly from our website:
https://www.helpandmanual.com/ewriter.html
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.
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.
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The Samurai Red color scheme in the older V2 skins was so popular that many users have asked to have a version of it in the new V3 skins. We have now complied and provided a total of six new V3 Samurai Red skins, with Boxed, Flat and Minimalist versions for both WebHelp and EWriter. Matching tablet and phone modes are included in all three WebHelp skin variants, of course.
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See the Premium Pack information page for general details and purchase information and the Premium Pack web-based documentation for full instructions.
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.
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.
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[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.
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See the Premium Pack information page for general details and purchase information and the Premium Pack web-based documentation for full instructions.
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.
[showhide type=”howtoget” more_text=”Click for instructions” less_text=”Click to hide”]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.[/showhide]
[showhide type=”svgsprites” more_text=”Click for details” less_text=”Click to hide”]We have replaced the font icons in the V3 skins (WebHelp and EWriter) with SVG sprites. This eliminates problems some people had when working on systems configured to block font downloads.
Windows is a little retarded in this respect, it even regards local font files as font downloads. This significantly reduces the overheads for the icons, reducing the number of files that need to be loaded for the icons on page load to zero.
We have also replaced the PNG icons in the TOC with SVG icons, which are a lot sharper and more flexible. See Using Your Own Icons for details.
Simple SVG icons can consist of just a few bytes instead of tens of kilobytes or more. In addition to this you can pack a whole set of SVG icons into a single file called an SVG sprite that can then be integrated directly in the web page. This makes them much more efficient, since no external files need to be loaded. Furthermore, unlike normal graphics files or even discrete SVG files, SVG sprites can be styled with normal CSS, just like HTML text.
Making this switch was a major project. Although everything looks pretty much the same after this change performance is improved, icons are generally sharper and the number of http requests that need to be made on each page load has been significantly reduced. It also eliminates an annoying problem, so that it is no longer possible for font download blocking to stop correct icon display.[/showhide]
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See the Premium Pack information page for general details and purchase information and the Premium Pack web-based documentation for full instructions.
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/
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!
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.
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:
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.
Please download the update to Help+Manual 7.2 from our download page and install over your existing installation of Help+Manual.