URL structure with Premium Pack skins

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Ed Hawco
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URL structure with Premium Pack skins

Unread post by Ed Hawco »

Hello. I've been using H+M for a number of years, quite successfully. I have NOT been using the Premium Pack, but recently I've encountered a few limits with the standard version so now I'm considering it. One issue though: my understanding is that the URL structure is different in Webhelp projects built with the premium pack skins. Specifically, they don't use the "?query_parameter" method. (I'm not 100% sure of this, but it's the impression I get when reviewing the documentation.)

I.e., a topic URL currently looks something like this:
https://documentdomain.com/userguide1/i ... _topic.htm

...and with the PP skin it would be something like:
https://documentdomain.com/userguide1/a ... _topic.htm

While I appreciate the simpler URL and can see its many advantages, it's a problem for legacy reasons. My current documentation set contains a lot of docs and topics whose URLs are pretty much carved in stone. This includes "Requirements" topics that are linked to from within legal contracts, plus many, many topics that are linked to from a third-party knowledge base, plus a whole lot of cross-linking between documents.

Redirects would work on a smaller scale, but this is way too big for that.

Question: is it absolutely necessary to use the simpler URL format with the PP skins? Or is that just an option?
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Tim Green
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Re: URL structure with Premium Pack skins

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Ed,

The legacy index.html?topic.htm format is also supported for backward compatibility in the V3 skins but we strongly suggest moving away from it as soon as possible. This backward compatibility will definitely be removed at some time in the future, at least in completely new skin designs.

Here is an example of the two syntaxes linking to the same topic in the Premium Pack's own documentation:

New syntax, only linking to sp03_screenshots.html:

http://www.it-authoring.com/info/pp3hel ... shots.html

Old syntax, linking to index.html?sp03_screenshots.htm

http://www.it-authoring.com/info/pp3hel ... nshots.htm

Note that it's even possible to use .htm in the topic filename, although the .html extension is actually used throughout to match the index.html file extension. This is because index.html is now only the default topic; otherwise there is no difference between it and any other topic file.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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User avatar
Ed Hawco
Posts: 165
Joined: Thu Nov 07, 2013 5:50 pm
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Re: URL structure with Premium Pack skins

Unread post by Ed Hawco »

Thanks for the info, Tim. I can definitely see the advantages of the new syntax. It's just a hard slog to fix all those references! :-)
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Ed Hawco
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