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 »
Coming soon: Machine Translation in Help+Manual
Posted by Alexander Halser on January 27, 2020
Here’s another small teaser of something we’ve been working on the last couple of months:
Machine Translation
How to bookmark topics in Help+Manual
Posted by Alexander Halser on January 23, 2020
You know, when something has been right in front of your eyes for years, it’s not always the most obvious thing. Today we got a feature request from a customer to implement a favorites list for topics. Read the rest of this entry »
HelpXplain integration in Help+Manual
Posted by Alexander Halser on January 21, 2020
We are working on a closer integration of HelpXplain into Help+Manual. Additional print options will be available soon. How about printing all slides in a tabular order? That’s something you can’t do with a video.
Premium Pack 3.50 Maintenance Update
Posted by tim green on January 20, 2020
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.
HelpXplain 1.2 Released
Posted by Alexander Halser on December 3, 2019
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.