Help+Manual 8.0.2 Maintenance Update
Posted by Alexander Halser on March 21, 2020
This is an important maintenance update, strongly recommended for all users of version 8!
Data Loss with Topic Status Change
Version 8.0.2 fixes a bug related to topic-status changes that can cause data loss: if the topic status was changed for multiple topics at once, those topics that have been edited before (and were yet not saved) lost their content.
This bug also triggered a problem with the table of contents, a warning appeared that the table of contents could not be stored.
Please, download and install v8.0.2 over your existing installation of Help+Manual 8.
New Features and bug fixes
- eWriter eBooks: several small fixes to the eBook viewer – initial browser zoom on high-dpi monitors, viewer app button was sometimes too large, app button color highlight did not always revert to normal.
- Images in nested tables: were displayed at the wrong size if editor zoom was > 100% and the user switched between editing the outer topic and the first table. This bug was a cosmetic issue only.
- Publishing tasks: after publishing a task, the click to show the compiler log created an error. Wrong caption in publishing tasks dialog (Delete selected item was named Add Task Action).
- Image toggles inside table cells, with a fixed image size and without caption, did not scale with Premium Pack skins when the text size changed by the user
- Link lists: when chapters without text and regular topics were mixed in a list, the text-only-chapters did point to the previous topic
- HelpXplain export: umlauts in tooltips of poster image had wrong encoding
- DeepL translation plugin: Japanese and Chinese Simplified are now supported
Update Build 5475 (March 29)
- Design-time comments: when a comment was displayed as an icon only, it could not easily be double-clicked for editing. Double-click editing for icon-only comments has been improved.
- Bug fix for the customize-bullet-list dialog
- Error message “Invalid characters in path” fixed
Download
Help+Manual 8.0.2 is available from our download page:
EC Software Business Continuity Plan related to Covid-19
Posted by Alexander Halser on March 15, 2020
Dear EC Software Clients and Help+Manual Users,
In light of the global spread of Covid-19, we have been monitoring the situation for some time and have taken precautionary steps to safeguard the well-being of our team members and their families while simultaneously ensuring business continuity.
We would like to inform you of what we have done and will do to minimize any disruption for our and your business:
Remote work
We have closed our office until at least end of March and keep working from home. All of the team members are well and healthy and none of us has been traveling to at-risk countries recently. We feel confident that over the next weeks and months, there should be no degradation of our ability to support you.
Continued Email Support, Telephone Hotline Closed
Due to our office being closed, telephone calls for sales and support usually cannot be answered. Please contact us by email, the online contact form, or post in the Help+Manual user forum, if you have questions or need software support. Our generic support address support@ec-software.com is regularly monitored and usually answered within a business day.
We greatly appreciate your understanding and cooperation throughout this entire situation and will continue to keep you informed of any significant changes that may impact our business.
Sincerely,
EC Software Executive Team
Office or Home Office? Floating licenses allow both.
Posted by Alexander Halser on March 10, 2020
Floating licenses are a great way to deployHelp+Manual to many users in your organization. A floating license is a concurrent license – it can be used by one person at a time, but is not bound to a particular computer.
With Help+Manual 8, they are not even bound to a local network or departement. The license pool can be shared among all users of an organization, whether they work on site, are in a different location or work from home.
Help+Manual 8.0.1 Update: Slow Editor Solved
Posted by Alexander Halser on February 28, 2020
We are glad to announce the release of Help+Manual 8.0.1 – a small version change but one that includes an important bugfix!
Topic editor was responding slower and slower
The problem occurred with topics that contained one or more lists. It wasn’t apparent at the first look, but editing and selection speed became slower with every text change that was made. Switching to another topic and back solved the problem for a short time. This bug has been addressed and the topic editor is now significantly faster than before.
New Features and bug fixes
- The eWriter eBook viewer has an additional command line option to put the eBook window on top of other windows (“stay-on-top”). Furthermore, the configuration for the eBook menu has an option to specify the color of the application menu button. Instead of just orange, you can select your own color. An optical viewer glitch on very large monitors has been fixed and the eBook viewer app is no longer signed – this is an intentional change, because the signature of the executable gets invalid anyway, when packed with HTML data.
- Screen Capture: the automatic window selection did not work on Windows Terminal Server
- German UI: translation bug in “Online Activation failed” string caused an error
- Link lists to TOC entries that included merged projects at more than 1 level (e.g. a sub-sub-project) did not work in PDF
Download
If you have an older version of Help+Manual installed, you can use the update side by side with an existing installation. Help+Manual 8 is available from our download page:
https://www.helpandmanual.com/downloads.html
Upgrade Bundle Offers extended until March 4th
We offer several upgrade bundles with discounts of more than 40%! The super discounts will be available until March 4, 2020. Please hurry up to get them!
Deploying eWriter for Software Documentation
Posted by tim green on February 26, 2020
If you are using eWriter books as documentation for your software you will want to open specific topics in the help from your application. To do that you need to be able to reference the viewer directly, so it is best to install it along with your software. You can’t be sure that the user will have it or where it will be otherwise. You also need to consider the following issues:
- You should always make your help calls explicitly to the version of the viewer that you have installed.
- You are allowed to and should redistribute the viewer application with your own software.
Read on to learn how to get this set up and working optimally.
Step 1: Get the eViewer.exe executable from the Help+Manual program directory
The current version of eViewer.exe is always included in the Help+Manual program directory. You just need to include it in your own installation. It doesn’t require any special installation or registry keys. It will actually run fine from a USB stick. If you wish you can rename the viewer file and re-sign it with your own certificate so that it matches the rest of your software. That is entirely up to you and we don’t have a problem with it.
Don’t register the .ewriter extension
We also recommend that you do not register the .ewriter extension as part of your installation. Instead, always make your calls explicitly to your installed eViewer.exe and your own help files. This guarantees that you are using the same viewer that was up to date when you generated your help. However, you will also want your users to be able to open your help files themselves by double-clicking on them. So read on to learn how to do that.
Consider using a different extension for your own help files
It is also fine and actually a good idea to change the extension of your help files to anything you like. If you do this, you can register your own custom extension to your installed version of the eViewer application so that your users can open your help files themselves by double-clicking on them.
Then you don’t get any conflicts if the user gets .ewriter files from somewhere else. If they open .ewriter files on Windows 10 they will get the Windows Store version of eViewer automatically (and that extension is required for the Store viewer), and then you don’t have any conflicts: The .ewriter extension is always used for the Store version and your application always opens your help files with your installed version of the viewer.
Help+Manual 8 Build 5452 Update
Posted by Alexander Halser on February 15, 2020
We have updated the initial release from Feb 9 to build 5452. This is a small maintenance update that fixes a couple of minor problems that customers have reported since the initial release of version 8.
- The eWriter Viewer app is now included in the distribution of Help+Manual, no separate installation required
- Bugfix toggle images: left/right aligned toggle images without image caption were not correctly positioned in Webhelp
- Bugfix PDF: some OLE objects could have caused an error during PDF export
- Optical glitch with text conditions on high-res monitors fixed
- New setting in Program Options to manually specify the link to HelpXplain
- Batch compilations: extra message about maintenance removed, task bar button removed
- Extra task bar button on Windows 7 removed
- Webhelp export: the full-text indexer did also index HelpXplain presentations, because they are separate HTML pages. Xplains are now excluded from indexing, because they are always hosted by a topic page and should not be displayed as stand-alone pages.
- When a help project was opened from Windows Explorer (double-click) and the last edited topic (which is automatically displayed, when the project opens) was extremely long, an error prevented Help+Manual from starting.
- Right-aligned images in table cells sometimes caused a miscalculation of the right cell margin
- Print/PDF problems with equation objects fixed, the debug function to highlight links did highlight dead links in green (should be red).
- Link lists: variables in link captions are now resolved
- Amazon Kindle export did not work
- ePUB/Kindle export: magnification lens for image toggles has been removed for these two output formats. The support for image overlays is too weak by many ebook readers.
Download
If you have an older version of Help+Manual installed, you can use the update side by side with an existing installation. Help+Manual 8 is available from our download page:
https://www.helpandmanual.com/downloads.html
Upgrades and Special Upgrade Bundles
We offer several upgrade bundles with discounts of more than 40%! The super discounts will be available until the end of February. So, there enough time to try out the new release.
Help+Manual 8 Released
Posted by Alexander Halser on February 9, 2020
We are glad to announce the immediate availability of Help+Manual 8, a long awaited new major release with tons of new features. Along with Help+Manual 8 goes the updated Premium Pack 4 add-on with new Webhelp and magazine-style skins.
New features at a glance
- New plugin system (PDF Review, Machine Translation)
- Floating server licenses with checkout
- Animated screencasts and new screen capture tool
- Native formula editor and new symbol dialog
- PDF: Rotated print, table of figures, HelpXplain print options
- User interface, editing and formatting
- Premium Pack v4 Update
- Explore the new features in detail
Download
If you have an older version of Help+Manual installed, you can use the update side by side with an existing installation. Help+Manual 8 is available from our download page:
https://www.helpandmanual.com/downloads.html
Upgrades and Special Upgrade Bundles
We offer several upgrade bundles with discounts of more than 40%! The super discounts will be available until the end of February. So, there enough time to try out the new release.
https://www.helpandmanual.com/order.html?promotion=upgrade
Coming soon: New Screen Capture Tool
Posted by Alexander Halser on February 6, 2020
We have implemented a completely new and much more advanced screen capture tool in Help+Manual. This tool supports:
- Captures on multiple monitors with different resolutions
- Multi-part captures (add new captures to the existing capture to create a single image)
- Capture animated HelpXplain screencasts for tutorials – a series of screenshots with animated transitions showing how to do something on the computer screen
eWriter Creator Update
Posted by Alexander Halser on February 4, 2020
The free eWriter eBook compiler got a small maintenance update. This update does not introduce new features, but improves the readability for high contrast seetings.
Download the update:
https://www.helpandmanual.com/ewriter/
Coming soon: PDF Peer Review
Posted by Alexander Halser on February 2, 2020
You create a PDF file with Help+Manual, including your own comments, and distribute it to your colleagues for additional comments, which they add with their own PDF commenting tool.
When they return the commented PDF to you, you open it with the PDF Review Plugin in Help+Manual and it shows you all the comments side by side with the corresponding topic selected.
Read the rest of this entry »