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Cara Bereck Levy
Cara Bereck Levy
Known Participant
January 4, 2015
Question

RoboKnights: IS there a foolproof format for Help hosted in a website?

  • January 4, 2015
  • 2 replies
  • 476 views

Once open a time, I generated WebHelp, uploaded it to our company site, dubbed it a noble Knowledgebase, and there it sat, accessible to all. It was the Best Beloved of people desirous of viewing Help via Google Translate.

And so, the years passed, and the poor WebHelp Knowledgebase was forgotten and fell into disuse. Even the Fairy DocMomma (that would be me) ignored it.

It was rediscovered by an intrepid explorer. And it was decreed that the Fairy DocMamma would wave her magic wand and update Knowledgebase in renewed glory....

THUNK!!! You hear that?!!! That is the sound of the Fairy DocMomma's headdesk: THUNK THUNNK!!!

So, RoboKnights--what do you recommend?

What is the best, most foolproof method and format for putting Help on the Web?

What dragons might rear up and bite the DocMomma in areas not mentioned in publick support forums...?

Using RoboHelp 10, updated + patched.

I actually generated an AIR output, and had it uploaded...just AIR, not the AIR for browser...and it seems to be OK. I did not yet try to generate it with the inter-related projects that I traditionally include with my .chm for the desktop application. I should note that this is a big project. about 500 topics in the main project, at least that many in the sub-projects, lots of graphics.

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

Captiv8r
Captiv8r
Legend
January 4, 2015

Greetings, thou DocMomma

Curiosity is gripping thee. Aside from thy mold that thou gazes upon thy crusty words of wisdom, hast thou discovered other petulance yet unsolved by a good oiling? Sentence fragments? Knowledge shards? Perchance, a crumbling of dusty framing?

I bid you a good day... RoboWizard

    Cara Bereck Levy
    Cara Bereck LevyAuthor
    Known Participant
    January 5, 2015

    Thank you, Peter! I will be looking at WebHelp, then.

    And Greetings to the RoboWizard :-)

    Mostly, WebHelp just would not load. Not at all in Chrome, and in IE11, navigating to another file caused the TOC to disappear.  I downloaded whproxy, recompiled, and then was able to produce a working AIR file.

    I will be trying again with WebHelp.

    Should I update to RH11? Or stick with RH10, if my deliverable is WebHelp?

    Again--thanks for your help--you guys are The Best :-)

    Willam van Weelden
    Willam van Weelden
    Inspiring
    January 6, 2015

    I was thinking of HTML5. Is anyone here doing this?


    I know of a few companies using HTML5 (either Multiscreen or Responsive). The gist is that they only support modern browsers (read IE9+). Otherwise it's either WebHelp or CHM with the odd FlashHelp here and there. The HTML5 will work if you don't have to support IE8 or earlier.

    Kind regards,

    Willam

    Peter Grainge
    Community Expert
    Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    January 4, 2015

    On my site I make the point that Adobe have not updated AIR (installed or browser based) for several versions of RoboHelp. It's a format that didn't really take off so I wouldn't recommend that anyone starts to use it now.

    Webhelp is really the only format for server based help. That later your version of Rh, the better the browser support but Rh10 should be OK.

    See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

    @petergrainge

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