Many HelpSmith users have already appreciated the enhanced support for styles introduced in HelpSmith 10.1. This feature allows you to easily setup and update the formatting of content in your project, as well as structure the content in a topic, similarly to how it is done in MS Word and other major editors.
The ability to combine paragraph and text styles has become especially convenient as you no longer need to manage separate styles. Additionally, you can quickly create bulleted and numbered lists just by applying styles without the need to setup list-related settings every time. Finally, if you have tables in your documentation, you can use full-featured table styles allowing you to specify the font, size, spacings, background, borders and other formatting settings for the table’s elements, such as the header row, total row, odd and even rows, the first and last column, etc.
How to Use Styles when Working on Your Content
If you are looking for the right tool to create your documentation, then we want to share with you a video that demonstrates how easy it is to work with content in the HelpSmith help authoring tool (which can be downloaded here) thanks to its true support for styles.
As you can see, when working on a topic, in most cases, you can simply use a standard set of styles to format your texts, create lists, and even set up tables. And when you need to change the look of your content, you can do so by editing the styles in one place!
The Benefits of Using Styles in Your Documentation
To summarize the benefits that support for dynamic styles gives you when writing your documentation, here are some key points:
- Setup and apply a consistent set of styles.
- Easily update the appearance of content by editing styles.
- Structure content within a topic by using Headings.
- Create bulleted and numbered lists with just a few clicks.
- Use table styles to setup and change the appearance of tables.
- The ability to setup an alternative view of a style in a specific documentation format.
- Move styles with your preferred settings between different help projects.
- Use shortcut keys to quickly apply styles from the keyboard.
Use Keyboard Shortcuts for Quick Access to Styles
By the way, if you prefer to work on your content using the keyboard, HelpSmith provides you with the ability to assign keyboard shortcuts for quick access to styles. For example, you can set key combinations like Ctrl+Shift+F1 for Heading 1, Ctrl+Shift+F2 for Heading 2, Ctrl+Shift+N for Normal, and Ctrl+Shift+H for Highlight. This will allow you to apply these styles to the selected text without using the mouse.
Today, it is clear that full-featured support for styles is a must-have feature for any help authoring tool which is used for creating help files, browser-based help systems, or PDF manuals. This not only simplifies working on content in the topic editor, but also makes your documentation software compatible with popular text editors, various formats, and other external tools.
Download the Latest HelpSmith Version
It should be noted that the HelpSmith 10.x actually obtained significant changes and improvements since the implementation of enhanced styles has not only affected the built-in word processor, but also many other functions of the help authoring tool, including the import capability and the ability to import and create help files and documentation in various formats.
Finally, thanks to feedback from our users, in HelpSmith 10.1.1 (Build 25.311), we have fixed some minor issues related to the work of the enhanced version of styles. Therefore, if you are already using HelpSmith 10.x, make sure that you have the latest version and build, which can be downloaded here.