SnipSVG Version 1.5 for Windows and macOS
Posted by Alexander Halser on November 9, 2024
SnipSVG 1.5 comes with a new set of shapes: all the typical shapes required to create a flowchart. This is a first step towards making SnipSVG a versatile flowcharting tool. There’s more to come in a later version.
However, most of the work for the v1.5 update went into the macOS version. We not only fixed bugs, but made it ready for macOS 15.1 Sequoia.
HelpXplain Maintenance Update: Build 1854
Posted by Alexander Halser on October 17, 2024
We have updated HelpXplain to version 1.8.4 build 1854. This update does not introduce any new functionality, but fixes a problem with text objects sometimes being cut off at the bottom. If you face this problem with existing Xplain files, please re-apply the font size for the text objects affected by this problem.
Furthermore, this update handles two occasional error messages better. One error has been fixed, the second is being properly reported.
All updates are available from our download page.
SnipSVG Maintenance Update for Windows and macOS
Posted by Alexander Halser on October 10, 2024
We have updated SnipSVG to version 1.4 build 370. This update does not introduce any new functionality, but fixes a problem with text objects sometimes being cut off at the bottom. If you face this problem with existing SnipX or SVG files, please re-apply the font size for the text objects affected by this problem.
All updates are available from our download page.
Maintenance Update: Help+Manual 9.6 Build 6810
Posted by Alexander Halser on October 7, 2024
We have identified a problem in the recent update of Help+Manual: YouTube videos were not exported to HTML anymore, due to an internal error during the export. The build 6810 update fixes this problem.
Furthermore, build 6810 introduces Markdown snippets and improved HTML snippets. Read the rest of this entry »
A Practical Guide to Accessible HTML
Posted by Alexander Halser on September 30, 2024
Accessibility has been a hot topic for quite a while, but now it’s getting serious. From July 2025 it’s going to be a legal requirement for all new products in the EU, and this also applies to websites and documentation. So how are we going to make HTML accessible?
As of July 2025, all new products in the EU must conform to the European Accessibility Act (EAA), and this includes websites, HTML documentation as well as hardware and software. Web designers and documentation authors are going to have to comply in time if they want to avoid some potentially eye-watering penalties.
Documentation in PDF and some other local file formats can be handled accessibly with updated software, but when it comes to HTML, authors are pretty much on their own. This article explains the basics of making HTML accessible and compliant.
Please note: This article is about accessible HTML in general. When you create Webhelp/HTML5 with Help+Manual, our tool already outputs the required accessibility tags and attributes for you. Look for updates tagged “ARIA” on this blog, to learn more about accessibility in Help+Manual. This article, however, is still useful for Help+Manual users who want to update customized Webhelp skins to make them accessible.
Help+Manual 9.6 and Translation Assistant Maintenance Update
Posted by Alexander Halser on September 19, 2024
We are glad to announce the immediate availability of Help+Manual 9.6 and an updated Translation Assistant.
Most of the changes in this update relate to HTML export and import, with several small improvements of the user interface. HTML export (that includes Webhelp, CHMs, ePUB and eWriter formats) is using a lot more ARIA tags to comply with accessible HTML standards.
Help+Manual 9.6 Changes
- Screen Capture: while selecting the capture area with the mouse, the mouse position can be moved by simply pressing the arrows keys. This is helpful on high resolution displays to fine-position the mouse pointer to the edge of a window.
- Screencast: the options dialog for screencasts includes a new option: Enlarge cursor icon.
- Image hotspot editor asks to save changes, if the dialog is canceled after changes have been made.
- Topic Editor: when using TAB or SHIFT+TAB in a numbered list or bullet list, this increases or decreases the list level, respectively.
- Topic Editor, Zoom: the zoom trackbar got a right-click menu with typical zoom values.
- Editor Style Dropdown: the dropdown list for the style combo box was too long in some cases and may have exceeded the screen height.
- For new help projects, the spelling check exclusion of style “Code Format” is now true by default.
- HTML Export (Webhelp, CHM, eWriter):
- SNIPX images that are going to be exported as SVG now use the <object> tag instead of the <img> tag. This enables embedded animated SVGs and object links inside the SNIPX file.
- Images, toggle images, videos and Xplains with captions are exported with a <figure> and <figcaption> combination. This also works for images with caption that do not have an ID. The <figure> and <figcaption> tags are wrapper tags around the image and are compatible even with very old browsers.
- Math objects (equations) exported as SVG are written with ARIA role=”math”.
- QR code objects are written an alt attribute: alt=”<datastring>”.
- For all videos, the <iframe> tag now has a title attribute (taken from the video caption or alt value).
- HTML skins and standard templates: ARIA landmark tags and roles added to all standard skins. (If you use customized skins, you may optionally update them.)
- Standard responsive Webhelp Skins: small change to the search script to always focus the search box when the search page gets loaded.
- HTML Help (.chm) export: if a project included Helpxplain slideshows and the temporary folder for the CHM output was not empty (because it was not deleted after a prior export), this skipped the export of this Xplain (which was correct), but did not include the Xplain in the .HHP file, either (which was wrong).
- eWriter Export: if the specified custom icon file was missing, the error was reported during compilation, but the .ewriter file could not be displayed because of the missing icon.
- eWriter: We have included the latest eViewer 5.2 in this update.
- HTML Import (affecting CHM/HTML5/Robohelp import):
- Improved copy & paste of HTML code from the Windows clipboard.
- CHM Import: better support for HHCTRL ActiveX objects. If a link uses a “related topics” HHCTRL control to jump to another topic, these links are resolved. Some Doc-to-Help projects contain such links.
- The title attribute of links is imported and assigned.
- HTML CSS with class names is split up into Help+Manual style templates . This results in significantly less inline CSS.
- Word/DocX Export:improved export of file links. External file links are now exported without a “file://” prefix, similar to MS Word.
- PDF Export/Print: if an index keyword has so many page references that the text doesn’t fit in one line, the justified text option is removed for this keyword and all text is printed left-aligned.
- Update Build 6804 (Sept 24, 2024): the executable of build 6802 contained an invalid manifest file, resulting in bad scaling on high-dpi monitors.
Help+Manual Translation Assistant 9.6 Changes
- Windows 10 long path names enabled in manifest file.
- DeepL: brackets (< >) in image captions (for instance: variables) stayed escaped after translation resulting in text like “<%VAR%>” instead of “<%VAR%>”.
- DeepL: the error message “Please note: TSL 1.2 encryption is required for communication with DeepL.” had raised a different formatting error instead of displaying the error message.
- The image hotspot editor asks to save changes, if the dialog is canceled after changes have been made.
All updates are available from our download page.
eWriter Viewer v5.2 Update
Posted by Alexander Halser on September 12, 2024
This is a maintenance update for the eWriter Viewer 5 with support for Microsoft Edge.
Changes in Version 5.2
eViewer for Windows (32/64 bit)
- Start problems fixed: when started without a help file, the viewer sometimes did not start at all
- HTML dark mode for Internet Explorer implemented (the Microsoft Edge display engine does support dark mode anyway). For details, see the documentation in the developer distribution package.
Download of all packages:
SnipSVG and HelpXplain Maintenance Update
Posted by Alexander Halser on August 16, 2024
We are glad to announce the immediate availability of SnipSVG 1.4 and an updated version of HelpXplain 1.8.4.
SnipSVG 1.4
- Paste from clipboard: additional support for SVG data implemented. SnipSVG understands the ‘image/svg+xml’ format as well as plain text. If clipboard contains regular text starting with “<svg”, SnipSVG attempts to insert the SVG data as image.
- Insert SVG icon: problem with initial size calculation fixed (width and height always preferred the viewbox attribute)
- Favorites button: this button is now always enabled. When empty, it shows an info text with a link to the corresponding help topic.
- F1 help: more detailed context-sensitive help when pressing F1
- Formatting text: when applying a text format to a partially selected text, the caret sometimes vanished.
HelpXplain 1.8.4
- Creating screencasts: the layout and options dialog for screencasts includes a new option: Enlarge cursor icon. The cursor symbol of screencasts recorded on displays with high resolution (Windows scaling > 100%) had a different size than in screencasts recorded at scaling 100%.
- Paste text from clipboard: if the text on the clipboard contained HTML tags (brackets), the special characters were not escaped.
- Formatting text: if the text contained literal HTML code (e.g. “<b>Text</b>”), the content was taken as raw code, resulting in the removel of the brackets.
- Insert SVG icon: problem with initial size calculation fixed (width and height always preferred the viewbox attribute)
All updates are available from our download page.
eWriter Viewer v5.1 with Microsoft Edge
Posted by Alexander Halser on August 2, 2024
We officially released eWriter Viewer version 5 with full support for Microsoft Edge (Windows version).
Changes in Version 5
eViewer for macOS
- Accessibility improvements and better support for screen readers and macOS VoiceOver.
eViewer for Windows (32/64 bit)
- Accessibility improvements and better support for screen readers
- Supports Microsoft Edge as display engine, with a silent fallback to MS Internet Explorer if the Edge runtime is not available
- Compared to the beta version released in April, the Edge display engine is now significantly faster and supports custom context menus.
- Update v5.1 (Aug 7, 24): with MS Edge, external file links did not work when they were executed from an <iframe>. This was the case with external file links were included in ebooks compiled with standard skins.
Download of all packages:
Fast-Help Converter Updated to Version 1.4
Posted by Alexander Halser on July 24, 2024
This is good news for our growing Fast-Help user community: we have updated the converter application for Fast-Help databases!
Download:
https://www.helpandmanual.com/fasthelp/
Version 1.4 fixes several conversion issues, in particular with Fast-Help projects created (or started) with old versions of Fast-Help. The update solves missing images, missing tables and errors when converting CHM text popups.