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Neil Perlin has written a well-rounded white paper covering the top mistakes Help authors make when creating a Help System.
Among the mistakes:
Creating a Section 508 Compliant version of a Help System is often a requirement for Help authors. The process involves such things as adding screen tips to images and links, and ensuringSection 508 Compliant Output is selected before you compile the layout.
When opened in a web browser, the compliant output will look much like the image below:
Notice that there is a TOC on the left. At the right, there's a link with the word "Hide." Clicking the word "Hide" simply hides the TOC at the left. (And the word "Hide" changes to "Show.")
If you'd like to make it a bit more obvious what the "Hide" and "Show" links will do, you can edit the text prior to compiling the layout.
On the Single Source Layouts pod, show the Properties of the compliant layout (you can right-click a layout and choose Properties).
Select the Navigation group from the list of WebHelp settings at the left. From the In Topic Navigation area, click the Editbutton to open the In Topic Navigation Options dialog box.
Edit the text in the Show and Hide fields to suit your needs and then click the OK button.
When you compile (Generate) the layout, your new labels will appear as links at the right of the page.
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One of the most often used areas of any Help System is Search. And since Search is created automatically when you generate a layout, there's nothing the RoboHelp author has to do to make Search available for the user.
Search does have one main drawback for the user. If the word the user types in the Search box isn't found within any topics, the Search will fail and nothing will be displayed for the user. A failed Search is a missed opportunity for both you and the user.
Here is an example of how Search could fail. Your company Help System, a Policies guide, includes a topic concerned with contraband substances in the office. The word contraband is contained within the topic so the word will be found if users search for that specific term. However, a user who is curious about contraband substances might elect to search the Help System using another word, such as illicit. Because the wordillicit isn't in the Help System, the Search will fail.
There are a couple of ways to fix the problem. One way would be to add Search terms to the properties of individual topics. Another way, which I'll cover here, is to use RoboHelp's Advanced Settings for Localization to create a synonym (illicit) for contraband.
In RoboHelp, choose File > Project Settings. On the Generaltab, click the Advanced button to open the Advanced Settings for Localization dialog box.
On the Synonyms tab, click the New button. It's now a simple matter of adding the Word and its Synonym. In the image below, I've added illicit as a Synonym for contraband. And since many of my users type the mangers when they really mean managers, I've made a Synonym pairing for those two words.
In the Generated WebHelp layout shown below, notice that I have searched for illicit. While illicit isn't a word in any of the topics in my Help system, the Drug Policy topic was still flagged in a successful search.
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If you have a need to include PDFs in your Help system, you have a few options. You can create a link to the PDF (which will open the PDF once the user clicks the link) or you can import the PDF into the project (which will create a topic out of the PDF).
There is another, less known technique for including content in your Help System, and this technique actually embeds the content within a topic: iFrames. You can use iFrames (inline frames) to insert PDF files or HTML files within an HTML topic.
Inserting an iFrame is simple:
The iFrame won't look like much when viewed in RoboHelp's Design window. However, the results are awesome when you preview the topic. In the image below, the PDF is displayed within the iFrame. Unlike an image, the PDF within the iFrame is scrollable, you can zoom in and out for a closer look, jump between pages, and (coolest of all) use the Show Acrobat toolbar button to display the PDF in Adobe Reader so it can be printed, etc.
To edit an iFrame, double-click it to change the name, the linked item, or the border. While in the Design window, you can also drag the frame handles to resize the frame.
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RoboHelp allows you to integrate content created by different authors in Microsoft Word and Adobe FrameMaker. You can create projects by linking or importing Word and FrameMaker documents and then publish in different formats, including printed documentation. You can also use Word and FrameMaker documents as source files in an existing RoboHelp project.
This article is a quick summary of the import and linking process.
If you want to ensure that the appearance of your topics is consistent project-wide, one of the first things you should think about doing is creating a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) and then assigning the CSS to all the topics in your project.
To assign the CSS to a single topic, open the topic. On the Formatting toolbar, click the Assign Style Sheet or Create New command. Select an existing CSS from the drop-down menu (or create a new one on the fly) and you are done.
On the Appearance tab, select the CSS you'd like to use from the list of Style Sheets at the left (in the Style Sheet area) and click the OK button.
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You can do a lot of fancy stuff in Word. In fact, if you're really comfortable using the program, you can create a book that looks every bit as good as those produced by desktop publishers using programs such as QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign or Adobe FrameMaker. (Okay, okay… I'm not going to venture any deeper into the muck… Word can create some pretty complex stuff, but it's not for me… I prefer to use FrameMaker.)
Many people who use RoboHelp also use Word as the main authoring tool for the content that will be imported into RoboHelp. Unfortunately, during the import process there's potential trouble around every corner. For instance, the more complex the Word layout, the higher the risk that something will go wrong when that layout is imported into RoboHelp.
Let's take Word's ability to wrap text around an item and the Shapes feature as examples. You can use the Shapes feature to quickly draw a line or a callout to a screen capture inserted into a Word document. The shapes may look just fine in Word. However, once imported into a RoboHelp project the resulting collection of screen capture, line and callout will rarely look very good. This is especially true if you use any of Word'sWrap Text features other than Inline with Text. (One would use Word's Wrap feature on an object to control exactly where that object appears in the Word layout.) For example, in the image below Word's Wrap Text was set to Tight. There's a callout to the right and a squiggly line.
The image below shows the content after it has been imported into a new RoboHelp topic. Notice that the Shapes did make it into RoboHelp… but the integrity of the layout has been lost.
The Paste Special dialog box opens.
The independent shapes have been converted into a single image. Once imported into RoboHelp, the Shapes will appear as they did in Word… and they'll Generate just fine too.
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by Kevin Siegel
Instead of importing content into RoboHelp from either Adobe FrameMaker or Microsoft Word, you can create a link between RoboHelp and the source document. One tactical advantage to linking to content instead of importing is if the Subject Matter Expert (SME) updates the source document, a few simple clicks in RoboHelp will update the RoboHelp project with the updated content.
It is possible that you will need to make local changes to some of the linked content from within RoboHelp and you don't want to rely on the SME to make the changes to the source document. Editing the content within RoboHelp is simple: open the topic from within RoboHelp and make edits just like you would in any word processor. However, if the source document is later updated by the SME, and you update the RoboHelp project with the intent of grabbing those changes, all of the changes you made to the content from within RoboHelp will be lost. Ouch!
If you find yourself needing to make changes to some of the topics from within RoboHelp, and you don't want to risk losing your edits, you can update the linked document so that your changes are preserved should you update the linked documented with its source.
On the Project Manager pod, right-click the linked document and choose Properties to open the Word Document Settings dialog box.
On the File Update Settings tab, select the topic(s) you plan to edit within RoboHelp (put a check in the check box) and then click the OK button.
You are now free to update the topic from within RoboHelp as you see fit. Should you notice that the linked document has been updated by the subject matter expert (a yellow alert icon will appear on the document if the document is our of synch), go ahead and right-click the document and choose Update > Update. Topics that were not selected from the list of Generated files will be updated with the SMEs content changes. Topics that you edited will not be affected.
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An important vulnerability has been identified in RoboHelp and RoboHelp Server. A specially crafted URL could be used to create a cross-site scripting attack on RoboHelp installations. The solution is now available.