About full address of page and about commercial

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Andrey Bushman
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Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2015 12:54 pm

About full address of page and about commercial

Unread post by Andrey Bushman »

I wrote my questions at the firstscreen:
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If I open full address of page manually (copy to clipboard its URL and past into web-browser address string), then I see its path like I need, but at this case the table of contents is disappeared:
1.png
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waldemar.hersacher
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Re: About full address of page and about commercial

Unread post by waldemar.hersacher »

You need to copy the template file from the template folder to another folder.
If you want to use this skin for multiple projects copy it to "My HelpAndManual Projects" folder otherwise copy it to the folder where you have your project.
Now you can change the skin and replace the H&M logo with your own or remove it. It is the file company-logo.png in the baggage file section. This file name is linked by the text variable COMPANY-LOGO-IMAGE and the link behind in COMPANY-LOGO-LINK. So add your own file to the baggage files and change the variables.

The correct address for the page is index.html?settings_writting.html. That it is how it is displayed in the URL display on my system. I created a new project with the same unchanged skin.

When opening the page directly and having the TOC opened as it was with the classic skin may prevent the page from being indexed by search engines. I have read a note from Tim about that.

Interestingly the address is not updated when choosing a new topic in the TOC. I'm normally using a Premium Pack skin where this happens.

BTW there is an error in the page template for the variable SKIN-STRTRANS-SYNTOC. The variable is named SKIN-STRTRANS-SYNCTOC in the variable list. Changing the variable name in the page template you get the text Click to Display Table of Contents at the place in the third image at the red marked text. Clicking on it will open the TOC.
Waldemar
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Tim Green
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Re: About full address of page and about commercial

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Andrey,

In addition to Waldemar's excellent comments, a note on why the URL is not updated with the standard skins. WebHelp is a special kind of web page with special requirements. In addition to the topic pages you also need to display a table of contents that can have hundreds or thousands of entries, a keyword index that can also have thousands of entries, a search page and also static components for integration in your website (header, footer etc). If you put all this in a single page it would be so large that it would take several seconds to load, and all of it would have to reload every time you select a new topic.

To avoid these problems the additional components, including the topic pages, are loaded into iFrames inside a container page. This allows all the components to load asynchronously (all at the same time, instead of one after another), and makes it easy to replace the topic content when displaying new topics without having to reload all the other components (TOC, index, search page etc). So what you are seeing in the URL is not the topic page, but the container page into which the topic page is loaded.

The standard skins don't change this URL when browsing to new topics because the URL isn't changing. Only the content of part of the page is changing.

Normally, changing the URL in the Address: bar will force a reload of the entire page -- that's how HTML and browsers work traditionally. Any change in the URL forces a reload from the server. That's why the standard skins don't do that. However, new HTML5 features with something called the "history API" have made it possible to change the URL dynamically without reloading the entire page. This technology is integrated in the Premium Pack skins, which also have a Permalink feature to make it even easier for the user to copy the URL of the current page.
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.
Andrey Bushman
Posts: 51
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2015 12:54 pm

Re: About full address of page and about commercial

Unread post by Andrey Bushman »

Thank you, guys for your helpfull answers. I tried the Premium Pack skins now. Yes, it solved these my problems.
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