WebHelp, as its name suggests, is primarily intended to be viewed by users accessing files stored on a web server. It can and often is installed on the user's desktop but for Internet Explorer you will need to apply what is known as the Mark of the Web (an option that can be applied when configuring the layout). Some users have also found links to Word and PDF files troublesome when WebHelp is installed locally. These are Windows issues, make sure you test thoroughly. For locally installed help the better option will be the HTML5 outputs or Microsoft HTML Help (CHMs).
Below you will find some tips on this output relating to this project and WebHelp generally.
You can define a Favicon that will then appear in the browser tabs. The start page is the three frame page that shows the user the toolbar, the navigation pane (the table of contents and index) and the default topic. In this project the Favicon is stored in the Assets folder.
Highlight Content Categories to see the categories you have set up. If you are not using Dynamic User-Centric Categories (Content Categories) you will only need to set up one category. Here it has been named US to note that its content is based on the US content in the topics.
Highlight a specific category to see its configuration. You choose which Table of Contents, Index and so on that you want to use if you have more than one option.
You also choose the default topic. Do make sure you understand the difference between the start page, which you defined in the General Settings, and the default topic. Show me.
The start page is the one that opens the three frames, all that you see above in the blue border.
The default topic is the first topic that users will see.
You have the option to configure using a different CSS for the output to override the CSS you used in the Design Editor when creating the topics. This can be useful if you want to have a different appearance, perhaps in different markets. If you are using Content Categories, you might want each category to be different.
In this example, the topics contain content that is specific to certain countries so the Conditional Build Expression has been set to exclude all content not required in the online help for the US based users.
Note how much easier it is to select the build expression. In older versions
you would have seen the expression and had to work out what would get
included. The name makes it obvious.
Most of the options here are fairly self explanatory and described in Adobe RoboHelp's online help.
Breadcrumb links have been deselected in this sample as the alternative method of including them in a Master Page has been used. Sometimes authors use both methods and wonder why they are seeing two sets of breadcrumbs. That's why!
Most of the options here are fairly self explanatory and described in Adobe RoboHelp's online help.
Once your help has been generated, you need to make it available to users. This may be done by installing it on the desktop (please note the warning at the beginning of this topic) or by publishing it to a server,
How this is done depends on certain factors and how your developers have chosen to operate.
When you generate the help, Adobe RoboHelp deletes all previous files in the target folder.
In most scenarios that is fine and all the files will be generated to that folder automatically. In that scenario, you can either zip the contents and pass the zip file to your developers or you can additionally publish direct to the server.
Advanced users may have modified the standard output in ways that require dependent files that Adobe RoboHelp is not aware of and will not be in the generated content. Publishing does not delete anything from the server so once the files have been upload uploaded, they will remain there until they are deleted manually. That avoids having to remember to upload them every time.
See Adobe RoboHelp's online help for details of how to set up Publishing.
