file dates

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Mike Scott
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file dates

Unread post by Mike Scott »

Just a query about the sub-folders \jspopups and \jstopics, using PP 3.30 Responsive Boxed Mango skin. A little change to just one page of the Help file causes all of them, and many in their parent folder to be updated with a new file-date. Is this technically necessary? :? It makes my uploading of new help files a lot slower....

Cheers -- Mike
Mike Scott
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Tim Green
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Re: file dates

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Mike,

Generally speaking, we recommend that you be extremely careful about using the time and date stamps of your files to identify what needs to be uploaded in WebHelp because it's sometimes not reliable. This depends partly on your settings in Configuration > Publishing Options > WebHelp > HTML Export Options: Apply date/time stamp of topic to corresponding HTML output file. If that is activated then the timestamps of topics will only change if the topic is edited, but the topic content can change even if the topic wasn't edited. For example, if you make any change to a template or skin, all the topics will change, but if you have the editing time stamp active, you won't see that in the timestamps and the result can be weird and confusing errors in your output.

If the time stamp option is off, all the output files will have the time of the compile, not the time of the last edit, which is probably what is happening in your case. If you turn it on you can reduce your upload overheads somewhat, as long as you always upload everything if you ever make any changes to the skin, or update it.

However, even when the time stamp option is on you will notice that all the actual .html files always have the compile time and date when you are publishing with a V3 skin. That is because every single topic file actually contains the entire layout in this format, and so they are treated as something that you should always upload. (In case you're interested: When the user visits a topic from a hyperlink that topic becomes the "home" page. After that they stay in that file and when they browse the content of new topics is replaced dynamically in the page from the versions in the jstopics folder. )
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Mike Scott
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Re: file dates

Unread post by Mike Scott »

OK, understood. Not a major problem.
Cheers --Mike
Mike Scott
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