HelpSmith Team’s Blog

Apart from the significant features such as the Web Help format (described in a previous post), we’ve also added a number of other useful tools that have been introduced with HelpSmith 1.5.1 and HelpSmith 1.5.2 recently.

Automatic export of topic Context numbers
If you are a C++, Delphi, or Visual Basic developer, you will find it useful to be able to automatically generate the header file with Context numbers from your HelpSmith help project. The header file includes associations of the topic’s textual identifiers (IDs) and numeric identifiers (Context) which are usually used by developers to provide context-sensitive Help via standard HTML Help API calls.
The new possibility is available via the menu command “Tools|Export Context Numbers”.

The ability to sort the table of contents
With HelpSmith 1.5.2, we’ve also added the feature allowing you to sort the whole or a selected part of the table of contents. Unlike dynamic sorting of the topic list that you can apply at any time for your convenience, this feature specifies how the table of contents’ items will appear in the final help system.

An alternative way to edit keyword references
The common way to edit the alphabetical Index in HelpSmith consists in adding keywords and associating them with the currently selected topic. However, that is not always convenient when you want to just modify topic references for an existing keyword item. With HelpSmith 1.5.1, we added such a possibility, so you can simply select the required keyword item and then edit its topic references in a special dialog-box.

Drag-and-drop support
Now you can move topics, items of the table of contents, and keyword items by the drag-and-drop method. I think this ability is a great improvement as well making the HelpSmith’s easy-to-use environment even easier.

Based on the feedback we receive from our users, we’re constantly working on improving HelpSmith. Thus, HelpSmith 1.5 released a while ago introduced support for a new help format, Web Help.

Web Help (or browser-based Help) allows you to easily export your help projects into a set of .HTML files that can then be published on your web server or put into a shared folder of your local network. This makes it possible for other people to access the help system via a regular browser program like Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Apple Safari, and so on.

A Web Help system generated with HelpSmith includes a table of contents and a keyword index, making such a help system as easily navigated as a regular HTML Help (.CHM) file in a desktop application.

With HelpSmith, you can also modify the default Web Help layout by applying custom fonts, colors, text labels, and other settings according to your own needs.

As usually, we tried to make all the process of creating a help system the easiest possible way. So all you need to do to export your help project into Web Help is just to click the “Create Web Help” command on the project menu or the appropriate button on the toolbar.

We are pleased to announce the release of HelpSmith 1.4. The list of new features/improvements includes:

Support for HTML Help windows.

Now you can modify settings for the main HTML Help window and also create secondary ones with alternative size, position, or other options. HTML Help allows you to display any help topic in a secondary help window when it is called by a hyperlink or by selecting it in the table of contents.

You can easily customize the primary main window of your HTML Help system. So you can set a custom position and size for the window, setup the navigation pane by enabling the advanced mode for the Search tab, or adding the Favorites tab. Also, you can specify which buttons should be used on the help window’s toolbar, and even add your own custom buttons.

Added support for video files.

Another new feature introduced with HelpSmith 1.4 is support for video files. Now you can easily insert .AVI files into the text of help topics. Working with video files in HelpSmith is similar to working with graphical files. Simply click “Movie from File” on the “Insert” menu to insert a movie and HelpSmith will automatically put it into the project’s media repository. Thus, you don’t have to worry about copying anything into the folder with your help project, and so on. Moreover, the single repository allows you to replace/update the inserted movie by another media file at any time. That is especially useful if the movie is used in multiple help topics since you don’t have to delete and insert it again into each help topic.

Improved HTML engine.

With HelpSmith 1.4, we introduce an improved internal HTML engine used for exporting help topics into HTML when you create a CHM file or simply export an individul help topic into the .HTML format. Besides a couple of new options related to HTML export, the given feature is an important step for us towards adding the third Web Help format which is currently under development.

New features for working with the project’s media repository.

The main idea of the project’s media repository in HelpSmith is that it eliminates the actions you would have to do in other help authoring tools while working with graphical or video files. With HelpSmith, you do not have to copy the media files into the same folder with your help project, also you may not convert the bitmaps or metafiles which you insert from a file or from the Windows Clipboard into a more optimal graphical format like .PNG, .GIF, or .JPEG because HelpSmith can perform all of those for you.

With HelpSmith 1.4, we’ve added new Clipboard-related commands, enabling copy/paste operations directly in the media repository editor. Moreover, we’ve added the replace feature, making it possible for you to easily update screenshots or movies by replacing them with an alternative media from file or from the Windows Clipboard.

Help project saving now works much faster.

Unlike previous HelpSmith versions, we’ve achieved a great speed of saving the whole help project due to code optimization. The tests show that it now takes less than a second on an average help project with one hundred or more help topics to save it.

As mentioned in the previous post, HelpSmith 1.4 is a more stable version. We’ve fixed a set of minor or more critical problems, many of which were reported by HelpSmith users.

If you are using a previous HelpSmith version, we recommend upgrading to the latest HelpSmith 1.4. To do so, simply download the new release from our web site at http://www.helpsmith.com/download.php, and then install the new HelpSmith version without uninstalling the previous one.

We’ve been working hard on a new version of our HelpSmith product. This important update will have support for video files, improved repository for the project’s media. Also, it will include fixes of different minor problems reported by our users. HelpSmith 1.4 is to be a more stable and faster version due to some new techniques we’re using.

At the same time, we’ve been working on a new help format known as browser-based help (or Web Help). The given format will allow you to place the whole help system to your Internet web server or just to make it available through a local network. Such an online help system has a set of benefits that I will describe in one of the future posts. The Web Help format is planned to be available in the next HelpSmith update after the version 1.4 is released.

Welcome to the HelpSmith Team’s blog. Here you will meet the people who are involved in producing HelpSmith, and learn the latest news on our help authoring software.

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