Printing from Webhelp using Premium 3 Skin

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MKamstra
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Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2018 1:04 am

Printing from Webhelp using Premium 3 Skin

Unread post by MKamstra »

Hi

I have been publishing my content which are help files for our application using Premuium Pack 3.45 Flat_State_Blue_Webhelp.hmskin. (and also the previous version)

Once I have published and the web page is displayed I can click Print and the print is available to me. The page and print dialog is displayed.

When I run the help from our application or directly from the HTML folder using Index.html and display the content and press the Print I just get an empty web page.

If I use one of the skins shipped with Help & Manual it works fine.

I am not a programmer and do not know HTML etc. We do have people here that do but just putting this out there to see if I can get this to work as they are not familiar with Help & Manual.

Thanks in advance - Margaret
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Tim Green
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Re: Printing from Webhelp using Premium 3 Skin

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Margaret,

You are probably using Chrome or Internet Explorer. Both these browsers recently introduced incorrect handling of local files opened from HTML pages when the page is not being displayed by a web server. They treat local files being opened in a new window as though they were being opened from another website and block them, believing that this could be a security attack. This is rubbish, but there's unfortunately no direct way around it. It will work correctly in the Edge browser on Windows 10 or in the Firefox browser anywhere.

However, if you just use the browser's Print function instead of the Printable Version link provided by the skin the CSS in the skin will still give you a printable version that is almost as good as the Printable Version link. We're observing this and may have to automatically default to this method on these browsers if these errors turn out to be intentional. :?
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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MKamstra
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Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2018 1:04 am

Re: Printing from Webhelp using Premium 3 Skin

Unread post by MKamstra »

Thanks for that... yes I just tested in firefox and all good. Our customers are complaining about the web browser print as it prints the whole screen rather than the topic. I'm meeting up with a couple of our programmers to see if they can do anything so the browser just picks up the topic. Thanks again...
Simon_Dismore
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Re: Printing from Webhelp using Premium 3 Skin

Unread post by Simon_Dismore »

MKamstra wrote:When I run the help from our application or directly from the HTML folder using Index.html and display the content and press the Print I just get an empty web page. Thanks in advance - Margaret
What if your application uses the Help+Manual 2 Go mini web-server to deliver webhelp locally — do you still have problem with printing?
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Tim Green
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Re: Printing from Webhelp using Premium 3 Skin

Unread post by Tim Green »

MKamstra wrote:Thanks for that... yes I just tested in firefox and all good. Our customers are complaining about the web browser print as it prints the whole screen rather than the topic. I'm meeting up with a couple of our programmers to see if they can do anything so the browser just picks up the topic. Thanks again...
You shouldn't need to do that with a V3 skin unless it has been very badly modified so that the print function no longer works. The normal browser print function should automatically give you just the topic and nothing else. A great deal of work was put into it to make that possible.
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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MKamstra
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Re: Printing from Webhelp using Premium 3 Skin

Unread post by MKamstra »

Hi... Thanks.... I have tested this and the new skins do just pick up the topic. In the help that we loaded with a previous version of our software using the previous skins the whole screen was being picked up. Now with the new skins loaded on an updated version of our software just the topic is being picked up. Margaret
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Tim Green
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Re: Printing from Webhelp using Premium 3 Skin

Unread post by Tim Green »

MKamstra wrote:Hi... Thanks.... I have tested this and the new skins do just pick up the topic. In the help that we loaded with a previous version of our software using the previous skins the whole screen was being picked up. Now with the new skins loaded on an updated version of our software just the topic is being picked up. Margaret
Yep. That was added in an update. You can also remove the Printable Version option in the menu so that users don't access it. The option for doing that is in the Skin Include Options in the Publish page. 8)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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