HelpSmith Team’s Blog

We are pleased to announce the release of HelpSmith 3.2. This new version introduces new features, includes important improvements and minor bug fixes.

New Possibilities

• A completely new spell checking engine and dictionaries for different languages are now available.
• A new customizable Project Merge feature with support for different Merge Modes, making it possible to import help topics, topic templates, and other elements from other help projects. This new functionality is useful for collaborative working on a single help system, for translation purposes, and for creating libraries of help topics and topic templates.
• The Tools|Export Context Numbers feature now supports C# and VB.NET formats.

Improvements

• The File|Import feature now restores the original folder structure and filenames of the graphical files, which are used in the imported HTML files. Also, imported PNG files now do not lose the extension.
• A number of improvements made to the Ruler tool: better working with different measurements; now the Ruler allows you to change a specific indent without changing the indents and tab stop positions, which are not the same for all of the selected paragraphs; other minor improvements made.
• The Media Repository window now displays icons for different file types.
• In Windows 7, the HelpSmith’s Task-Bar Button now displays the progress during the compilation of a help project.
• The Find window is now available at the Keyword Properties dialog-box similarly to the Browse for Topic(Template) dialog-box.
• The Find and Replace dialog-box now remembers search entries in case of an unsuccessful search.
• The Hyperlink, Contents Item, and Help Window dialog-boxes now save previously used URL addresses.
• The Contents Item Properties dialog-box now allows you to set an item icon as the default choice for a new contents item addition.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed problems with printing help topics from the HTML Help Viewer and from a browser program (for a Web Help system).
• Fixed a number of issues related to Bulleted and Numbered lists: incorrect behavior of the counter for multi-level lists; the tool-bar buttons Numbering and Bullets now use settings from the last selected item on the appropriate Tab at the Bullets and Numbering dialog-box, which makes it possible to configure the buttons; a new user interface for the Customize Level dialog-box, which also fixes an issue with setting a correct alignment mode due to using absolute positions; other minor fixes made.
• The buttons Decrease Indent/Increase Indent did not change the Level attribute of the selected paragraphs and did not move the tab stop which is used for the alignment of a Bulleted or Numbered list.
• The Paragraph Properties dialog-box now does not have an issue with setting the Indentation as Hanging. Now it uses absolute positions and allows you to select the Indentation mode similarly to Microsoft Word.
• Fixed a minor issue related to Tab Stops behavior in the HelpSmith’s word processor.

Links
You can download the latest HelpSmith version using this link.

We are pleased to announce the release of HelpSmith 3.1. This update includes improvements and minor bug fixes. You can find the full list of changes below.

Improvements

- Improved the HTML export engine used for the HTML Help and Web Help output formats.
- Added new pre-built topic templates to the New Template dialog-box.
- The built-in word processor now tries to recognize the correct text style or uses the Normal style when typing text after a non-text object.
- Implemented the “Add to Dictionary” command for the word processor’s right-click popup menu.
- The dialog-box for editing table borders now allows you to select all of the borders simultaneously.

Bug Fixes

- The Save button of the Print Preview window did not work in case when the default filename, generated by the Project’s or Topic’s title, contained unallowed characters.
- Some parameters of the selected table cells could not be modified simultaneously.
- The Properties command of the word processor’s right-click popup menu did not allow editing properties of a table.
- The Spell Checker’s option “Ignore Words in Uppercase” did not work for text with the “All Caps” attribute.
- Fixed a minor bug with graphical file filters in the Open File dialog-box.
- Other minor improvements and bug fixes.

Links

You can download the latest HelpSmith version using this link.

Tab Hockamier has written a review of HelpSmith on his blog “Coding Tools, Reviews, and Solutions”.

“Providing Help for desktop applications has been the bane of my development existence for years. I have tried building the html help files in web editors and then hooking the content in the Microsoft Html Help Workshop: what fun…”

Read More…

We are pleased to announce the release of HelpSmith 3.0.

New Features

- Added support for Templates allowing you to easily customize the design of all or a set of help topics of your project.
- Added support for text Variables which can be used in the HelpSmith’s word processor and in almost any other text field. You can add your own variables and their values can contain nested variables, and so on.
- Added the Non-scrolling Area feature allowing you to create permanent headers for help topics in HTML Help and Web Help systems.
- A new customizable Breadcrumbs placeholder which is replaced with the path indicating the location of the help topic in the Table of Contents.
- New Web Help features making it much easier to provide Context-Sensitive Help. Now a Web Help system created with HelpSmith includes built-in Java Scripts and allows you to use special URL parameters for calling a specific topic, etc.
- Added support for the A-Keywords feature in HTML Help.
- Hyperlinks can now use HTML Help macros such as KLink, ALink, etc.
- Added a possibility to change the picture location via the Image Properties dialog-box, which is available by double-clicking on a picture in the word processor.
- The improved “Find and Replace” tool. Now you can search topic and group titles and go to a topic by its Context or Id. These search features are also available from the Topic Browser dialog-box, making it easier to find a topic or template while working on a project.
- The core of the HelpSmith’s word processor has been significantly improved. Now it works faster on large documents due to internal optimizations, includes minor bug fixes, and is more convenient in working, as a result.
- The Media Repository window can now be displayed from the Project menu which is useful if you simply want to edit the repository, not insert a new picture to the editor.
- Added a special Rich Text Format compatibility mode, which allows you to reduce the size of RTF files created with HelpSmith.
- Improved user’s manual.

Changes

- The “Open” and “Save” commands have been moved from the “Topics” menu to the “File|Import” and “File|Export” menus respectively.

Bug Fixes

- Fixed a problem because of which the media repository could not be saved sometimes. In fact, it happened due to an internal system bug, but we could implement a workaround for this problem.
- Fixed a bug which caused an error when generating the printed manual in case when the project had bookmarks with duplicate names.
- Fixed a problem with bulleted lists using a custom image, which did not appear in the document when it is printed.
- Bulleted lists did lose their custom pictures in case when they were inserted from the Clipboard.
- A Tab Stop did lose its alignment setting when being moved on the ruler.
- The editor’s Overwrite mode now does not reset its state when you open another help topic.
- The Strikethrough attribute could not be selected for text due to an internal bug.
- The Spell Checker’s “Ignore Internet and file addresses” option did not work.
- Double-clicking on a hyperlink located in a nested table did show the “Hyperlink Properties” dialog-box more than one time.
- Other minor bug fixes made.

Links

You can download the latest HelpSmith version using this link. If you are a registered user, click here to learn more about how you can upgrade to HelpSmith 3.0.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions.

We have published a new article explaining how you can use HTML Help files with your .NET application. Although, .NET already includes support for HTML Help, we often receive questions from C# and VB.NET developers asking how to do this. You will also find a simple utility module with some additional functionality making it easier to provide context-sensitive Help.

Read more…

Another feature we are now working on is support for the non-scrolling area. The non-scrolling area is a view mode which is supported by HTML Help. It usually includes the topic title and any other quick information or links which are not scrolled together with the topic body. This is really useful for electronic help systems or e-books.

Unlike other help authoring tools which use a separate editor control on the top of the topic to imitate the non-scrolling area in design-time, HelpSmith will have native support for that possibility. It will look and work much better as the user will be able to set/unset the non-scrolling area easily by selecting a part of text and clicking a button on the toolbar (absolutely the same way as when you want to make the text bold or italic, for example).

With the release of HelpSmith 2.x we continue to receive positive feedback on the product from our customers and are currently working on the implementation of new features. The next significant enhancements will be support for Templates and Variables.

With Templates, you will be able to create and change the layout of all or a series of topics at once. A template will work like a regular help topic which can be edited by the HelpSmith’s word processor. But a template does not contain actual topic content. Instead, it contains variables playing the role of placeholders for the topic title, topic content, etc. The basic idea consists in that you can create templates and set any template to be used for all the topics of your help project, or set a template to be used for a series of help topics.

In addition, we are going to provide the possibility to use different templates for different output help formats. For example, if you create CHM and Web Help systems from the same source project, templates will allow you to make different design and layout for the help topics according to the style of the specific help format.

“As a topic-based help authoring tool with great features such as dynamic styles, HelpSmith is also useful in creation of Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format) documents or Microsoft Word RTF documents…”

From a new article on the HelpSmith’s website, explaining how you can use your help authoring tool to supply documentation in Adobe PDF and/or Microsoft Word formats.

Read more…

So we are pleased to annouce the release of HelpSmith 2.0. It took us some extra time to test out and prepare the final build in fact. However, now I can say that everything works just fine. Working on a help file with the brand new Dynamic Styles feature is nice. I think the users who have already purchased the latest version (or upgraded from an earlier HelpSmith version) will agree with me.

There are other improvements as well. We have finally completed the Search functionality for the Web Help format, so a WebHelp system now works in a regular browser program the way as if it were a compiled CHM file and you can now consider Web Help as an alternative help format to CHM when the latest one cannot be accessed via network, for example. Or, simply refer to this article explaining how you can solve those known CHM-related issues.

HelpSmith 2.0 includes a series of minor bug fixes and improvements to the built-in word processor, user interface, and so on. Now you can also export the generated Printed Manual into your preferred word processor (a feature requested by some users) if you need so for any reason. Though, of course, it can be printed out from HelpSmith directly.

Read more about HelpSmith 2.0 at the article by R.Richardson “Help Authoring on Steroids“.

One of the most frequently requested features is the system of dynamic styles and we actually understand how such a tool can simplify working with fonts, paragraph settings, and with bulleted or numbered lists as well. Moreover, having a full-featured style system, it takes only minutes to reformat the entire help project without the necessity to make lots of changes in every help topic.

In fact, HelpSmith’s word processor was originally designed as a style-based editor, but the user interface for that functionality was not implemented. Then, however, we decided to reconsider the existing (internal) style model and redesigned it in order to provide more possibilities. Now after quite a long period of time spent on rewriting the code and integrating it with the HelpSmith’s core, we are in the process of testing the new dynamic style system.

The HelpSmith’s dynamic styles will let you create styles of different types: text styles, paragraph styles, and list styles. Also, you will be able to create sub-styles which can have the same attributes as their base style, but override that or another property such as the font color, paragraph alignment, etc. There will be a set of reserved styles similar to the one that you can meet in Microsoft Word, for example.

Another great benefit of HelpSmith’s dynamic styles is that it will allow you to redefine how a style should look in different output help formats. That is you can create a style and set alternative views for HTML Help, Web Help, or Printed Manual.

We tried to make the user interface as easy as all the rest things are in HelpSmith. The main tool to operate with styles is the style tree representing the style hierarchy which you can see on the screenshot. So when you are working on a help project, you can visually see how a style looks, apply it to the selected text, or edit it via the dialog-box.

Also, we always try to provide complete backward compatibility and the new version of HelpSmith introducing dynamic styles will open your existing .HSM projects with no problem. Moreover, all the font, paragraph and other settings that you had to apply manually will be represented in the style tree, so you will not have to remake anything.

As it was mentioned above, the dynamic style system is under construction so far, but we are going to release this important feature as soon as everything is completely done and tested out.