Skins

[Mike Scott]

First, congratulations on H&M 7!

About skins, I am finding it a bit confusing.

(1) Am I right in assuming that in general Premium Pack skin users should keep on using the Premium Pack skins? And that the default skins which seem to have come with H&M7 are only for people who don't want to purchase the Premium Pack?

(2) Any chance of making it easy to change the header box details, logo etc away from the supplied H&M ones? I do use PP Updater but it won't handle HTML_HEADERBOX.HTML etc. Surely any user who wants a header above the main pages will typically want their own logo, background, menu and ideally wants to design it once and update it with every fresh version of the skins that comes out?

(3) In relation to the PP skins what about a COLOR section, allowing users to choose a basic skin (Webhelp, iPad,etc) and within that choose a set of colours (Mango, MetroBlue, BeGold etc.) At present if I change colour I have to reconfigure the whole skin with PP Updater plus all the header box details.

(4) Ideally I'd like a responsive set which would work (with some sections conditionally showing) with a smartphone all the way up to a large desktop screen. If I've understood right the Premium Pack skins are not responsive but some of the non-PP ones are but only with recent versions of Internet Explorer? Maybe what I'd like is simply not achievable yet / does not suit Help files?

Grateful for clarification.

Cheers -- Mike

[Tim Green]

Hi Mike,

The existing Premium Pack skins are fully supported in Help & Manual 7. However, we have also released a small update (2.70) with additional support for some new Help & Manual 7 features. For example, you can use the 2.70 WebHelp skins to create EWriter eBooks and help files, and the CHM skins now have dedicated support for Help & Manual 7's ability to create scalable CHMs for high-resolution Windows devices and monitors. You can get the 2.70 update with the same download credentials you have been using for your existing copy of Premium Pak 2.x. If you no longer have that just write to support AT ec-software.com (replace the AT with @) and we'll help you out.

Am I right in assuming that in general Premium Pack skin users should keep on using the Premium Pack skins? And that the default skins which seem to have come with H&M7 are only for people who don't want to purchase the Premium Pack?

You can definitely go on using the existing PP skins if you want, but by all means try out the new standard skins as well.

Any chance of making it easy to change the header box details, logo etc away from the supplied H&M ones? I do use PP Updater but it won't handle HTML_HEADERBOX.HTML etc. Surely any user who wants a header above the main pages will typically want their own logo, background, menu and ideally wants to design it once and update it with every fresh version of the skins that comes out?

(3) In relation to the PP skins what about a COLOR section, allowing users to choose a basic skin (Webhelp, iPad,etc) and within that choose a set of colours (Mango, MetroBlue, BeGold etc.) At present if I change colour I have to reconfigure the whole skin with PP Updater plus all the header box details.

We're looking into things like that. However, at the moment we're really working on getting the new responsive PP skins ready (see below) and that has priority.

(4) Ideally I'd like a responsive set which would work (with some sections conditionally showing) with a smartphone all the way up to a large desktop screen. If I've understood right the Premium Pack skins are not responsive but some of the non-PP ones are but only with recent versions of Internet Explorer? Maybe what I'd like is simply not achievable yet / does not suit Help files?

I'm working on exactly that, but it will take a while longer. Since I also do all the Help & Manual support and write all the documentation, it has not been possible to get the new responsive skins fully finished as well. It is coming, however, and it will be worth the wait. Among other things they are going to include the ability to embed the help in existing web pages with a snippet of code (similar to embedding a YouTube video), and the ability to display formatted popups on any page in your site without having to display the entire help. This means you can have context-type (?) and (i) links anywhere on your page that display popup help locally, with content managed centrally in your Help & Manual project.

[Mike Scott]

Brilliant.
I think I will await these new developments then.

Cheers -- Mike