Category: Help Authoring

An inherent weakness in HTML is the inability to position page elements exactly where you want them. To counter this failing, one often-used trick is to use tables. You put an element into a table cell, add columns and rows to add spacing, turn off the cell borders and, presto, a page layout that looks just about the way you want.

In RoboHelp, you can use Positioned Text Boxes. They can contain text and/or graphics and can be “positioned” exactly where you want them on the page. When previewed with a browser, the position of the box will not change.

Using Positioned Text Boxes, you can create complex page layouts similar to those you would have had to create in desktop publishing programs such as PageMaker, QuarkXPress and InDesign.

To add a positioned text box:

1. Open a topic
2. Choose Insert > Positioned Text Box
3. Click in the Positioned Text Box and either type some text or insert an image
4. Drag the Positioned Text Box anywhere you want in your topic

   That’s it. Go ahead and give it a try!

RoboHelp 6 now comes with the ability to create and use variables. What are variables and how can they help you? Variables can contain information that occurs frequently in your project, such as a product name, company name or copyright notice.

After creating the variable, you can insert it into any RoboHelp project or onto a template by dragging and dropping.

Let’s say you want to have your company name appear throughout the project. You could accomplish the task the old-fashioned way by typing the company name over and over again. Or you can create a variable called CompanyName, whose definition is your actual company name. After creating the variable, it’s a simple matter of dragging the CompanyName variable into any topic.

Now here’s the cool part. Assume your company name now appears throughout your project, and now you want to change it. Without the variable, you would have to use RoboHelp’s Multi-File Find and Replace tool to update the company name. Thanks to variables, all you actually need to do is update the definition of the CompanyName variable and you will change the displayed company name project-wide in just a few seconds. Sweet!

Create a User Defined Variable

• On the Project pane, right-click the User defined Variables folder and select New Variable
• Type a name into the Variable Name area
• Type a value into the Variable Value area
• Click OK

Insert and Edit a User Defined Variable

• Drag the variable from the User defined Variables folder into any topic(s) in your project.

  When you drag the variable into a topic, the Variable Value appears. Should you update the variable at any time, it will update all instances of itself throughout the project.

• On the Project pane, open the User defined Variables folder
• Double-click the variable to open it for editing
• Change the Variable Value
• Click OK

RoboHelp 6 HTML now ships with a tool called RoboScreenCapture. The new tool, which can be accessed via the Tools panel, allows you to capture screen shots just like programs such as SnagIt and FullShot. (The big benefit to using RoboScreenCapture is that you won’t have to buy those other tools.)

Here are some of the features you will find in RoboScreenCapture:

• Quickly capture your screen in 10 efficient modes, including Free Hand, Virtual Screen, and Multi-Region
• Easily capture screens with an easy drop-down menu, assign your own keyboard shortcuts, and even control RoboScreenCapture with voice commands
• Easily capture those difficult-to-grab screens such as DirectX, Direct3D, 3Dfx, Voodoo, and Glide mode games
• Capture more than is visible on the screen, such as long Web pages
• Save your screen capture in over 20 image formats
• Have screen captures automatically saved to graphics files
• Quickly add image stamps, frames, drop shadows, and more
• Change image colors, flip or rotate images, and crop images to a smaller size
• Add identifying stamps to each screen capture, such as a company name or logo
• Call-out specific areas of your capture with shapes, shadow effects, etc.

Here’s how you can use RoboScreenCapture to capture an image to the clipboard and paste it into a RoboHelp 6 project.

1. Double-click RoboScreenCapture to start the program
2. Choose Capture > Capture Settings
3. Select the Copy & Print tab
4. Select Copy each capture to Clipboard
5. Choose Options > Configure Hot Keys
6. Notice that [Ctrl] [Shift] [W] is the application default for pulling a screen shot
7. Click Close
8. Minimize RoboScreenCapture and start the program you want to capture
9. Press [Ctrl] [Shift] [W] to start RoboScreenCapture
10. Point at the window you want to capture and click one time

    The captured window appears in the RoboScreenCapture editing area, and the capture is on your clipboard.

11. Close RoboScreenCapture
12. Back in RoboHelp, open a topic
13. Click where you want the image to appear
14. Choose Edit > Paste

    The screen shot you created appears in the topic.

RoboHelp fanatics rejoice, there’s a new version in town. Adobe announced RoboHelp 6 earlier today, and not a moment too soon.

Among the myriad improvements to RoboHelp you will find:

• Improved Word Import Filter
• RoboScreenCapture
• Captivate 2 integration
• Mark of the Web integration
• Improved RoboHelp Server Publishing
• Improved Conditional Build Tags
• User Defined Variables

During the next several newsletters I’ll introduce you to all of the new features. In this issue, I’ll discuss the Mark of the Web.

Mark of the Web is a comment added to the HTML markup for a Web page. When a user opens the Web page from their local machine, Internet Explorer references this comment to determine the security zone in which it should run the page.

Available through the properties of a WebHelp, WebHelp Pro, FlashHelp and FlashHelp Pro layout (by right-clicking and choosing Properties), you would select this option if you didn’t want your output (saved on your machine) to get blocked by Internet explorer 6 and above when you viewed the output.

Fellow RoboHelp and Captivate instructor Rick Stone wrote a series of articles dealing with importing Captivate movies into RoboHelp. If you are a RoboHelp user, you will find the information very useful. In the interest of space, I have combined the articles below. You can read the full text on Rick’s site.

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It’s quite common to use Captivate in conjunction with RoboHelp in order to provide comprehensive assistance for the end user. For example, why just capture screens and type explanations, when you can just show them a movie? The movie can also contain audio!

How to insert Captivate Movies into RoboHelp

1. Right click the desired folder inside RoboHelp HTML and choose Import… from the context menu.
2. Ensure the "Files of type" field at the bottom of the dialog are reflecting HTML files.
3. You then navigate to where the files are stored, select the desired file and click the Open button.
4. At this point, the HTML "companion" page as well as the .SWF are brought into the RoboHelp project. You then treat the HTML page as you would any other HTML topic page in your RoboHelp system.

If you view a Captivate 1 movie in Internet Explorer, you typically encounter some oddness. Specifically, as you mouse over the movie, it becomes surrounded by a frame. If you rest the mouse pointer over the frame, shortly you see a "Tooltip" type of popup message that says "Click to activate and use this control".

You see this message because Microsoft found themselves on the losing end of a lawsuit and was ordered by the court to change the way Internet Explorer presents content such as Flash. The odd part of all this is that while this behavior is observed when viewing the movie using good old Internet Explorer, it performs a disappearing act if you insert the movie into a .CHM file. If you insert the movie into a .CHM file, you don’t have to click to activate it. You may wonder why I think this is odd behavior. After all, Internet Explorer (IE) is the browser and the .CHM file is a help file, no?

While you would be correct in assuming they are definitely two different entities, the .CHM viewer relies on different components of the browser to display content. Thus I would think if content has an issue in IE, the same would result inside the .CHM.

Sooo, if it works just dandy inside a .CHM file, why should I care?

Well, one workaround for this behavior is to reference some external JavaScript for displaying the movie. The method the Adobe Captivate developers have implemented is to include an additional JavaScript file that is used when displaying a Captivate 2 movie. Unless you tweak things, this additional file absolutely MUST be present in order for your movie to load and play. If the JavaScript file isn’t present, the movie will not play for your user! So this JavaScript file must now be included among the mix of files if you are importing the HTML page Captivate creates and adding it to your project.

There are two files involved if you are adding Captivate content to your RoboHelp projects in this manner. So as you can see, we now have at least THREE files involved.

• The Captivate .SWF that comprises the main movie
• The Captivate created HTML "Companion page"
• The Captivate created "standard.js" JavaScript file

Wrinkles abound!

Hmmm, as if this weren’t enough new potential variables to toss into the mix, Captivate 2 tosses in one more, just for good measure! With Captivate 2, you may also have one additional .SWF file in the mix.

What!? How can this be?

Want to learn more. Click here to go to Rick’s site and read the rest of the story…

You can easily create a Glossary in RoboHelp by clicking the Glossary tab, adding your Glossary term and definition.

But what if you’ve created a perfectly good glossary in Word and want to use it in RoboHelp? While Word does not allow you to directly import a Word document into RoboHelp, all is not lost. Here is how you convert your Word document into a RoboHelp glossary.

1. Open the Word document.
2. Type NAME= (case sensitive) in front of every word you expect to use as a glossary term.
3. Ensure the glossary definition appears on the very next paragraph (the definition cannot be more than one paragraph)
4. Copy the entire document to the clipboard
5. Navigate to your RoboHelp project and open the .GLO file with NotePad (or some other text editor- -the GLO file is the file RoboHelp uses to maintain the RoboHelp glossary)
6. Paste the glossary text you copied from Word into the GLO file
7. Save and close the GLO file
8. Back in RoboHelp, go the Glossary tab and behold that the terms and definitions to pasted into the GLO file appear on the Glossary

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The following article was written by Rick Stone, the RoboWizard. Rick is a well known and respected developer. His site is packed full of real-world RoboHelp and Captivate tips and tricks. Check out his Monthly Scry section for some very informative articles.

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When using the RoboHelp HTML WYSIWYG editor, have you ever encountered the following disturbing behavior? You compile, generate or preview and notice that your resulting text has odd spacing as follows:

Here is a wonderful paragraph. Notice it is neatly aligned and everything looks just peachy. Why, it might look just dandy in the RoboHelp HTML WYSIWYG editor, but when you view it in either the compiled/generated result or the RoboHelp HTML preview window, it has odd spacing (typically between sentences).        The spacing may look like this!

Believe it or not, the cute RoboHelp project Mogwai weren’t fed before midnight and mutated into the Gremlins that are messing with your project! What has probably happened to you is that you adjusted the left margin using the slider widget on the Ruler. This tends to add some code to your HTML indicating the left margin adjustment. Later, you decided to combine one paragraph with another. Quite logically, you positioned your cursor at the end of the paragraph and pressed the Delete key so the following paragraph appeared to continue to flow. And it does appear to flow properly while in the editor.

How to fix it?

One of the neat aspects of the RoboHelp HTML WYSIWYG editor is that if you select some text, then click the TrueCode tab, the same text (and attributes) are selected in TrueCode. This should easily show you what has happened to cause the odd gap. If you look closely, you will probably find that where the odd gap occurs, you see a tag containing a left margin declaration. Simply remove the opening tag and you should be set. If you wish to be extra tidy, you can traverse the text and locate the closing tag, but I find the WYSIWYG editor does a fair job of doing that automagickally.

The following is from Mocha Tosses:

__________________________________

Subject: Robohelp…

I have a .chm file, but no .mpj. How do I copy what’s in chm file into RoboHelp?

__________________________________

If you intend to copy legacy projects from older versions of RoboHelp for Word or RoboHelp HTML versions older than X5, the ideal situation is to have the HPJ file if you have a RoboHelp for Word project, or the MPJ if you have a legacy RoboHelp HTML project.

However, our friend Ms. Tosses doesn’t have either. She has an output file (CHM). The good news is that she can use the CHM file to create a RoboHelp HTML X5 project, but the process won’t yield perfect results like an HPJ or MPJ would.

If you would like to learn how to "reverse engineer" your CHM file so it can be used in a RoboHelp HTML project, read this enlightening information: http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/reverse_engineering/reverse_engineering.htm

Flare doesn’t have the ability to display two different TOCs, but you can accomplish the same thing as a second TOC if your output type is WebHelp or DotNet Help by using the Browse Sequence feature. With WebHelp and DotNet Help, browse sequences appear just like the TOC as a separate accordion tab with books and pages.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Create your browse sequence (Right-click the Advanced folder on the Project Organizer, select Add Browse Sequence, and name it something like SecondTOC).
2. Set up the organizational structure you want for your second TOC using the Browse Sequence Editor (just like you do for the TOC).
3. Add/edit a skin (Right-click the Skins folder on the Project Organizer and select Add Skin).
4. On the Basic tab of the Skin Editor, select the Browse Sequences check box.
5. On the Styles tab of the Skin Editor, open the AccordionItem style and click on BrowseSequence.
6. In the Properties area on the right side of the Skin Editor, open the Basic group, click in the field for the Label property, and replace the “Browse Sequence” text with the name for your second TOC (ex. TOC by Area).
7. Add/edit your target (Right-click on the Targets folder on the Project Organizer, select Add Target).
8. On the Basic tab of the Target Editor, select either WebHelp or DotNet help as the Output Type, select the skin you created, and select the browse sequence you created.

LIMITATIONS: The browse sequences don’t have the option to automatically sync like the TOC does.

Warning:  the Following is not supported by Madcap Technical Support, this is provided for your information only

CHANGING THE ORDER OF THE ACCORDION TABS

If you want to move the Browse Sequences tab to appear immediately after the TOC tab, do the following:

1. Open the <skinname>.flskn file in Notepad, Located in \project name\project\skins
2. Edit the "Tabs" attribute of the CatapultSkin tag to reflect the order you want.

Example:

<CatapultSkin Version="1"

Comment="This is the default skin"

Anchors="Width,Height"

Width="800"

Height="600"

Top="0"

Left="0"

Bottom="0"

Right="0"

Tabs="TOC,BrowseSequences,Index,Search,Favorites" <— CHANGE THE ORDER HERE DefaultTab="TOC">

NOTE: Any changes made to your Skins after this will cause this file to be overwritten and you will need to edit it again

TIP: The browse sequence files use the same structure and tags as the TOC files, so if you already have a second TOC, all you have to do is open Windows Explorer, go to your project folder, copy the .fltoc file from the Project > TOCs folder to the Project > Advanced folder, and rename the TOC file to use a .flbrs file extension.

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Note: This article was provided by the MadCap Software support team.
Author: Rob Houser with contributions by Richard Ferrell.