ZoomSearch Images and Help&Manual Search Images

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sizbut
Posts: 72
Joined: Fri Feb 02, 2007 11:58 pm

ZoomSearch Images and Help&Manual Search Images

Unread post by sizbut »

First, not a problem once you realize what is happening, just a heads-up to help anyone else who might encounter this.

I have a website that consists of numerous Help & Manual project outputs in webhelp format. Mainly Help & Manual V4 but we are finally ( :) ) moving over to Help & Manual V7.

We also use ZoomSearch to create a search index for the whole site and have it configured to add suitable icon images to the search results for when the result is an HTML file, PDF file, etc.

The issue we spotted was that some results in the site search were showing a missing image icon and we realised it was just happening for the new Help & Manual V7 content.

The cause is that the Help & Manual skin adds a <meta name="ZOOMIMAGE" content="./images/zoomimage.jpg"> tag to the page headers which specifies the image to use for the search results in the webhelp outputs own search (which uses Help & Manuals embedded version of ZoomSearch). When we re-index the sites search engine it reads and recognizes that tag and uses it as the image should that page be listed in its own results - but unfortunately the image path is not correct for a link from the site search page to where the image is located.

There are plenty of possible fixes:
  • We did test adding a /images sub-folder with a copy of zoomimage.jpg to the folder from which the site search was running and that worked fine.
  • In the end, since we weren't using the image file in the webhelp search, we removed the <meta ...> tag from the default page template in our skin.
  • We could have made the <meta ...> tag in our skin point to the location of the same image used by the site search.
  • I'm sure there are plenty of other methods.
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Tim Green
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Re: ZoomSearch Images and Help&Manual Search Images

Unread post by Tim Green »

Thanks for noticing this. I'll look into it and see if there is a way to integrate support for the image when the search page is calling from outside the WebHelp collection. 8)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Tim Green
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Re: ZoomSearch Images and Help&Manual Search Images

Unread post by Tim Green »

Update: The easiest way to fix this should be to replace the

./images/<%ZOOMIMAGE%>

reference in the page template with

<%HREF_HELPURL%>images/<%ZOOMIMAGE%>

You then need to make sure that your HREF_HELPURL variable (in the General Settings group) is set to the full absolute URL of your WebHelp folder, including the trailing slash. If it was on HM's own WebHelp site the resulting reference would then look like this:

Code: Select all

http://www.helpandmanual.com/help/images/zoomimage.jpg
Since the URL is absolute, it should then work no matter where you reference the page from. I'm going to change the templates to do it this way in the next update. In addition to this, the URL will also be parsed for Zoom highlighting queries, so the found text will be highlighted if you open the WebHelp from search results on an external Zoom search page. 8)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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sizbut
Posts: 72
Joined: Fri Feb 02, 2007 11:58 pm

Re: ZoomSearch Images and Help&Manual Search Images

Unread post by sizbut »

Thanks Tim. Have added that to my list of options. As I said, nice when two great products work so well together.
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Tim Green
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Re: ZoomSearch Images and Help&Manual Search Images

Unread post by Tim Green »

sizbut wrote:Thanks Tim. Have added that to my list of options. As I said, nice when two great products work so well together.
Thanks for the feedback! After thinking about including this by default I've now decided against it, because it would cause problems for people who forget to set the site URL variable. :? Instead, I'm including instructions in the help explaining how to do this if you need it. Both the V3 WebHelp skins and the V2 WebHelp skins will support highlighting in links from external Zoom search results pages, however. 8)
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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