Searching inside the AIRHelp

[Guest]

Hi,

We have a fairly large AIRHelp project (190 MB) that includes some baggage files and external links.

We've gotten great feedback internally on the AIRHelp, but got some questions on the search capabilities (among other things - I'll let the other questions rest for now..)

1. Is there any documentation on the search syntax available online somewhere? Are searches like "all text inside quotes", +word, -word, wildcards, etc possible?

2. Is there a way to enable search inside a page once you have the page loaded?

3. Is it possible to add local directories/files to search? I tried adding file:///*.pdf to the external search, but it doesn't seem to work.

4. Can one search the AIRHelp from outside itself? In our Windows program we're investigating if we can add a search field in the toolbar that would let the user search the project they working on AND the AIRHelp documentation.

Thanks,

Fredrik

[Peter Grainge]

1] Good question, well presented. I think you will have to set up some simple tests in a dummy project.

2] Assuming you are talking about locally installed AIR help as opposed to browser based help, sorry but the answer is no. The more people who request a feature, the more likely it is to be actioned. Please follow this link.

http://www.Adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform&product=38

3] I haven't tried that. Maybe a relative path?

4] When the help is installed, take a look in Program Files and you will see that effectively you have a webhelp structure with an AIR front end. Maybe your developers can do something with that but what they call will be just a single topic without the AIR front end. That is assuming they can search in Program Files. I am doubtful.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Guest]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for replying.

1. Have tested this, but it doesn't seem to work so well. My problem is that my searches return *too* many results, and I so I wanted to narrow it using search syntax. Will play with this some more and report back what works.

2. Have filed a feature request now. Do you know if Adobe keeps an updated page with all the requests (both bugs and enhancements)?

3. Will test some more - the wish is to have the search cover all PDF or html files in a relative folder so that they get included in the search (also allows for 3rd party plug-ins to provide documentation that can be shown in the search results).

4. Hm. You may be right. We will look into searching the webhelp pages though..

- Fredrik

[Peter Grainge]

With AIR Help the search is what it is. By that I mean you have to accept whatever Adobe have given you, for better, for worse. There is no scope for customisation.

Tracking bugs and enhancements - no such page exists. If only.

What you are describing is not how external search works. The link is triggered because you have defined a search word and when the user enters that word the link appears. It's a totally different concept. It does not search the content that is the target of your URL. WebHelp does allow you to search linked Word documents and PDFs but I don't think that is a feature of AIR Help, untested by me.

The more I see of what you want, it is a case of AIR was liked but you are wanting something it was not designed to deliver.

WebHelp plus ZoomSearch (see my site) may be closer but I still see issues. That combo is good for searching multiple sources but the search is based on a database you create, it is not an on the fly search. That's fine for your help and any other fixed datasource but you mentioned user projects and surely they are constantly changing? That sounds like something only your developers can create.

Another issue with WebHelp is if you need it to run locally. Make sure links to PDFs work in all browsers.

Overall you have some serious testing of ideas.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge