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dwc3
Known Participant
May 11, 2016
Question

How to launch online help from another server?

  • May 11, 2016
  • 1 reply
  • 664 views

I'm running RoboHelp 10.

Our company is going to be supplying client software packages that need to be small, and since the online help is about 75 MB, they request that customers be able to access the online help remotely -- located on a server machine. In this way, customers aren't required to install the online doc files on their client machine, yet need to still be able to open help topics (located on a server machine elsewhere).

Is this possible? How are online help topics opened when the help is on another machine?

Development has tried calling the help from a http address, e.g., http://localhost:port/cldocs/cloverleaf.htm#<id=159>>java=true, but that doesn't work. ("cloverleaf.htm" opens the online help).

dan


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1 reply

Jeff_Coatsworth
Community Expert
Jeff_CoatsworthCommunity Expert
Community Expert
May 11, 2016

Server as in LAN server? Sure, that’s possible – it’s what I use for one of my product lines. I have WebHelp installed on a client’s LAN server in a folder on a shared drive. They use their browser to launch both CSH help topics via MapIDs and the full help via the index page from within our software. You just have to keep in mind that even though it’s located on a server & not a workstation, browsers all consider it to be “local” HTML pages and they can slap security restrictions on it. If you haven’t got your RH10 all patched up and tweaked to handle browser security issues, you’re going to have malfunctioning help via the browser.

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prhmusic2
Inspiring
May 11, 2016

Very true! One of the security issues I had to deal with (years ago) was the Mark of the Web (MOTW). There is an option to add it to WebHelp and/or FlashHelp output.

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prhmusic2
Inspiring
May 11, 2016

Paul, are you saying you needed to ENABLE MOTW to make things work? Or are you saying it was enabled and disabling made things work?

Or something else entirely?

Cheers... Rick


Years ago, when I distributed WebHelp, it was installed on the user’s c:\ drive. With that help system, I distributed ~200 PDFs. The issue was because I couldn’t add MOTW to the PDF file, I had to create an HTML for each PDF file and, within the HTML file, include the MOTW line. I think there was a script that a co-worker created to automatically generate the HTML files for me – the details are fuzzy.

The only reason I replied is because MOTW was an example of the possible technical issues that Jeff alluded to and that there is a check box in the RH UI to resolve that specific issue.

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