RH 2017 - Announcing alerts, news, updates
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
We are evaluating RH 2017 Responsive HTML 5 layout over traditional Web Help.
One question the PM team has is that is there a way to show or configure alerts, news, updates that user would see when the user launches the help from the product?
The help will be hosted on a help server.
For example, some critical fixes have been made in the product that need to be highlighted/shown upfront on the launch of the help for about a month or until the next help build is pushed. Is that doable?
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
Responsive layouts have nothing different from WebHelp in that respect. It is something that you would have to design into your content and TOC. Maybe the default topic would have a What's New section or a link to it and the TOC would have the first book set up for that purpose as well.
There is nothing that would automatically expire.
See www.grainge.org for free RoboHelp and Authoring information.
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
At a previous job we had a popup with the What's New set up. It only popped up once, when a new major software version was detected. It was a long time ago so I can't remember how we implemented it, but it was probably something like:
When the help is run, check for a specific cookie. If it doesn't exist, create it, saving the current software version number as the value. If the cookie exists, check if the cookie value matches the major software version the client is running. If it does, don't do anything. If it doesn't, open the What's New topic in a new window - we somehow coded it so that there was no skin/layout, no "show help" link (usual for CSH calls) and no browser chrome (tabs, web address field, menus, etc).
I feel like there was also a text file included as baggage that contained the major version number ( I remember updating a file only for major versions, not service packs.) but I can't remember where it would have fit in.
Anyway, maybe this will give your developers some ideas about how to implement this feature.
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
Is the cookie of the chocolate chip variety? Or of the snickerdoodle variety?
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
We don't have cookies here, so I'd say it's a Monte Carlo biscuit.