New Flare 11 frameless top navigation - coming to RH soon?

Report · Apr 08, 2015

Flare's new version has "new Top Navigation HTML5 output allows you to break free from the limitations of the traditional tripane format with a sleek new responsive search engine-optimized output for online Help, knowledge bases and more."

Does anyone know if Robohelp can or will do the same?

One of my clients sent us a link to a site as an example of where he'd like the design of the help (currently done in RH10) to eventually end up. That site was created with Confluence (I contacted them to find out), but it looks like the new Flare feature would accomplish the same or similar design output.

I'm the lone RH advocate here, the other two writers prefer Flare. Between the design requirements and the dropdown/conditional text bug (conditional expression playing havoc on dropdowns), I'm facing a battle to keep the project in Robohelp.

Report · Apr 08, 2015

Indeed, RoboHelp 11 offers a frameless Responsive HTML5 output feature that would be a similar equivalent to what the Flare folks have.

Cheers... Rick

Report · Apr 09, 2015

Or the Multiscreen HTML5 which is even more frameless (but harder to set up). The Responsive output uses an iFrame, just like Flare. The Multiscreen doesn't use that.

I sometimes switch between the two outputs because some customers don't want iFrames at all and then you're out of luck with some HAT's.

Report · Apr 09, 2015

Willam, out of curiosity, do you know why these customers are opposed to iframes?

Is it possibly the case they are thinking these are bad because "HTML5 doesn't support frames" and they now believe iframes are part of that?

Cheers... Rick

Report · Apr 09, 2015

There may be some issues with accessiblity. Iframes work fine most of the time, but they are a pain to get working correctly on iOS. But I believe accessibility devices are the most important reason.

Report · Apr 09, 2015

Thanks Rick and Willam. My cursory googling of the HTML5 outputs showed tri-pane-ish samples, so I thought that was still a limitation and didn't explore further.

Two of our biggest projects now are in RH, so as long as the conditional text bug gets resolved, I may be able to make the argument to stay in RH.

Report · May 11, 2016

Late to the party on this one but Captiv8r what must I do in RoboHelp 2015 in order to achieve frameless output? I'm using Responsive HTML5 right now in some test projects.