Feature requests to catch up to competitors

Nothing is perfect! This is where you can post your ideas and wishes for functions you'd like to see in Help & Manual. Current version only please (H&M7).

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Patrick Marten
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Apr 16, 2017 10:02 am

Feature requests to catch up to competitors

Unread post by Patrick Marten »

Hello,

back in 2011 an user here posted some suggestions in this thread: https://helpman.it-authoring.com/viewto ... ets#p43053 based on the competitor software "HelpStudio" by Innovasys.

He was supposed to post them in the "Wish list" section, which he hadn't done as far as I see, so I would like to pick up this topic again, as two of the features are exactly what I wanted to suggest myself, because they are a big plus of HelpStudio in my opinion.

Feature 1: Widgets
DPMan wrote:[...]
Specifically we are looking for better snippet and widget handling.

It seems it would be beneficial to have some widgets already built into the software such as:
- Notes
- Tips
- Code block
- etc.

These are basically predefined code snippets with styles. I know we can create these manually but it is a bit tedious. Also right now to add a snippet it takes multiple clicks. It would be great if we had a docked list of snippets/widgets where we could simply drag drop.
[...]
DPMan wrote:[...]
http://www.innovasys.com/movies/viewmov ... 5ae329241c
- I know this is fairly similar to snippets but kind of liked the idea of the prepackaged notes, tips, code block widgets making it easier to get started out of the box
[...]
Feature 2: Content snippets
Snippets seem to be available in the current HM version, but it's quite complicated and everything but intuitive in my opinion. As far as I see, one has to create some content, then switch to XML editor, copy the XML code, save it in an XML file, so that one can load it from that file, if needed.
A bit better could be the option to use snippets from other topics, which would require an option to mark certain topics as "internal" or something like that, so that they don't appear in the generated help files. Not sure if that's possible, just starting my tests and comparisons.
However, in HelpStudio it's solved much better in my opinion.
DPMan wrote:[...]
http://www.innovasys.com/movies/viewmov ... 793b4d9249

What I like about this vs Help & Manual which should help feedback wise:
- It is nice to be able to simply drag/drop the snippets to the content of the topic
- It is also nice to be able to select part of the topic and drag it to the dockable snippets box to automatically create a snippet
[...]
Another feature, that is better solved in HelpStudio, is the management of images. There you have a kind of an internal image library, categorized, where existing images can be added manually or captured. When you want to insert an image, a window appear, that containt all images, where you can select one.

In HM the image seems to be added from a file all the time. Images, that have been added previously, appear in a kind of a pop menu, which only shows a few of the recent images, not all of them. All in one it's not very intuitive and comfortable as well, I find.

I hope you can see the advantages of these features and consider them for one of the next HM versions (ideally as soon as possible).

Best regards,
Patrick
pl labrie
Posts: 30
Joined: Sun Jun 22, 2014 5:11 pm

Re: Feature requests to catch up to competitors

Unread post by pl labrie »

A super interesting suggestion, when creating a link and that the target does not exist, it would automatically create the target .... but we have the right to dream ..... I get bored of robohelp. ....
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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: Feature requests to catch up to competitors

Unread post by Tim Green »

pl labrie wrote:A super interesting suggestion, when creating a link and that the target does not exist, it would automatically create the target .... but we have the right to dream ..... I get bored of robohelp. ....
This feature already exists in Help+Manual:
  1. Type in the title of the topic you want to create in the editor and select it.
  2. Drag it into the TOC in the place where you want to create the new topic. Be careful to position it BETWEEN other TOC entries, so that a blue line is displayed (if you drop it ON an entry it will create a link to that entry).
  3. Drop it on the blue line and a new topic will be created and the selected text in the source topic will link to it.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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