One Web Help for IOS, Chrome and Windows

Please post all questions relating to Help & Manual 6 here!

Moderators: Alexander Halser, Tim Green

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Bill Dimech
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Oct 24, 2011 4:03 am

One Web Help for IOS, Chrome and Windows

Unread post by Bill Dimech »

Hi All,
I am working on the help text a new project that will be web based. As such I am doing webHelp that will be published on a web server. Our Web based applications works across all three platforms IPad, Chrome Tablets and Windows browsers.
I want to create web help that is compatible with all 3 devices that still allows for indexes or searches etc, but I am having trouble with chrome on the Chome Tablets. It displays a message saying that the help text is not compatible with this device.

I am using Help&Manual Professional Edition 6.5.1 with the relevant Premium Pack.

I am not sure which is the best type of skin to use that is compatible across all of these platforms and allows them to search.
It is better for us to upgrade to version 7 to get the Fully Responsive skins? would these do a better job that those in v6 and do they have a search?

Thanks
Bill Dimech
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Oct 24, 2011 4:03 am

Re: One Web Help for IOS, Chrome and Windows

Unread post by Bill Dimech »

OK I actually found what I needed it appears that with the webhelp skins I was using, even though I set them to not to use frames they still do. If I use the specific skins that have Integrated IFrames, they appear to work correctly across all devices.
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Tim Green
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Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
Location: Bruehl, Germany
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Re: One Web Help for IOS, Chrome and Windows

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Bill,

Your copy of Help & Manual 6 is a little out of date. The current version is 6.5.6 Build 3027 -- you can download the installer here:

http://www.helpandmanual.com/downloads.html#oldver

Just install on top of your current version to update. This won't change any settings etc.

It's not possible to set WebHelp skins to not use frames in Help & Manual 6 -- at least not unless you build the entire skin from scratch. However, you need to make a distinction between iFrames, which are supported in HTML 5, and the old deprecated frameset element. iFrames are an efficient way to manage the problem of the large amount of data that needs to be handled in a single page in WebHelp (TOC, index, search page and the topic pages). If they are used correctly they are also not a problem for search engines.

All this being said, you aren't going to get a single WebHelp that will work smoothly across desktop, tablet and smartphone browsers in Help & Manual 6. The WebHelp skins in Premium Pack 2 that you are using will work on desktop and tablet browsers, but the performance on phones will not be all that good. Fully responsive skins across all device types have only become possible in Help & Manual 7.

The standard responsive skins included with HM7 are still iFrame-based, so they still use the old index.html?topic.htm URL syntax. The new V3 responsive skins in Premium Pack 3 are frameless for the main pages. This means that the URL of a WebHelp page is now just topic.html, and that page is indexed directly by search engines. The TOC, keyword index and search panes are still loaded into iFrames. This is more efficient and makes it possible to handle large TOCs and indexes without browser problems, particularly on mobile devices. Since those pages don't need to be indexed that is also not a search engine issue.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
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