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Adobe RoboHelp: Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid When Creating a Help System

Neil Perlin has written a well-rounded white paper covering the top mistakes Help authors make when creating a Help System.

Among the mistakes:

• Not developing mechanisms to support content consistency
• Not developing mechanisms to support format consistency
• Not revisiting project design in light of 'environmental' changes
• Not planning to test QA (Quality Assurance) and usability
• Not planning to create an index  

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Adobe RoboHelp: Importing & Linking Word Documents

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.

Adobe RoboHelp: Apply a CSS Project-Wide in a Snap

by Kevin Siegel  

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.

Using the technique above will get the job done. However, you can only use this technique to assign a style sheet to one topic at a time. A typical RoboHelp project is likely to have hundreds (if not thousands) of topics.

To assign style sheets to multiple topics, use the Topic Listpod to select as many topics as you want (you can select all of the topics by clicking once on any topic and then pressing [Ctrl] [a] on your keyboard). With the topics selected, chooseEdit > Properties to open the Topic Properties dialog box.

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.

Since multiple topics were selected before you opened the Topic Properties dialog box, all of the selected topics will now be using the same CSS.

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Adobe RoboHelp: Import Word Documents and Keep the Shapes

by Kevin Siegel  

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.

 

If you need to use the text wrap and Shapes feature in Word, I have a simple trick that will allow you to maintain much of the layout in RoboHelp.

1. Select the screen capture and shapes in the Word document. (Shift-click works nicely for this purpose.)
2. Cut the selected items to the clipboard (Ctrl-x).
3. On the Home tab of Word's Ribbon, click the bottom of the Paste command and choose Paste Special.
   
    
   
   The Paste Special dialog box opens.  
   
    
4. Select Picture (JPEG) from the As list and click the OKbutton.
   
   

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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Adobe RoboHelp: Security Update Announced

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.

 

Adobe RoboHelp 8: Search, Taken Out of Context

by Kevin Siegel

One huge enhancement found in Adobe RoboHelp 8 over older versions of the program is the improved Search features you get out of the box. First of all, RoboHelp now ranks the Search terms in order of importance. Nice. Secondly, the Topic's title and first few sentences of each found topic now appear on the Search tab.

While I'm happy about the Search rankings, I've had more than one customer tell me that the topic content that appears along with the topic makes the Search panel too cluttered. No matter, you can easily disable the feature.

1. On the Single Source Layouts pod, show the Properties of the layout.
   
   
2. Click the Next button to move to the second screen.
   
   
3. From the Search Options area, deselect Show Context in Search Result.
   
   
   
   
4. Generate and view the layout; then use the Search feature.
   
   You'll notice that the topic is still found, but only the Topic Title appears.
   
   

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Adobe RoboHelp: Synchronize the TOC Automatically

by Kevin Siegel

One of the three most common features of any help system is the Table of Contents (the Index and Search features are the others). However, even while most Help Authors take the time to create a detailed and seemingly helpful TOC, most Help System customers will not look to the TOC first when they are trying to get help. Instead, customers they will typically look to Search the Help System or use the Index.

Why don't Help customers look to the TOC first when looking for Help? As helpful as the TOC might seem to a Help author, the TOC is typically laid out in a logical order that's only logical to the person who created the TOC.

If customers saw the topic they were looking for on the TOC, there's a good chance they would click the topic on the TOC and open the topic. The problem is that a typical TOC might be made up of books inside of books inside of books. There is simply very little chance that the topic in question is open for the customer to click.

RoboHelp's Synchronize Table of Contents feature will automatically show where a topic is located on the TOC while customers use the Index or Search feature to get help.

On the Single Source Layouts pod, show the Properties of either  FlashHelp or WebHelp. Click the Next button and select Synchronize Table of Contents and then select Automatically from the drop-down menu at the right.




Generate and view your project. Use either Search or the Index to find a topic that is on the TOC. The topic will be highlighted on the Table of Contents. Believe it or not, the more your customers see the topic on the TOC, the more likely it will be that they will use the TOC to find and open the topic in the future.

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Need to learn Adobe RoboHelp 8... and fast? I'm teaching a live, online RoboHelp class at the end of this week (April 29-30). Click here to sign up or learn more.

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Adobe RoboHelp: Why Type It When RoboHelp Will Do it For You?

by Kevin Siegel

 

How many times have you found yourself adding the same information to your RoboHelp topics over and over again. Maybe it's the name of your CEO. Maybe it's your corporation's "mother paragraph" (the paragraph that tells customers what your company is all about).

 

Believe it or not, RoboHelp has the ability to replace a few characters you might type on your keyboard (such as the letters zzz) with a phrase, sentence... even multiple sentences). All you need to do is put RoboHelp's AutoCorrect feature on the job.

1. Open any of your project topics.
   
   
2. Choose Tools > Spelling Options and select the AutoCorrect tab.
   
   
3. In the Replace field, type some text (such as the letters zzz).
   
   
4. In the With field, type the text you would like to appear should you type the letters in the Replace field (in the example below, I typed three sentences into the With field.
   
   
   
   
5. Click the Add button.
   
   
6. Click the OK button.
   
   
7. Open any topic, press your [spacebar] and then type the letters you typed into the Replace field (such as zzz).
   
   
8. Press [spacebar] one final time and BAM! The letters have been replaced by whatever you typed in the Replace field.

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Need to learn Adobe RoboHelp 8? And fast? I'm teaching an online RoboHelp class at the end of this month (April 29-30). Click here to sign up or learn more.

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Adobe RoboHelp 8: Can Word Footers Be Used in a RoboHelp Project?

Question of the Week:

I'm linking MS Word documents into a RoboHelp project. On a smaller RoboHelp project, I copied and pasted the footers into the body of the text because the footers were not showing up in RoboHelp. The project I have in front of me has way too many footers and will be updated too often to do that, but I haven't figured out how to do it automatically. Do you know how?

Answer:

Yes, you can import the footers from Word. If the document is going to update frequently, you should be linking the Word document into RoboHelp instead of importing the text. After importing the document, and prior to generating the topics, choose File > Project Settings. Click the Edit button to edit the conversion settings for Word documents. From the Other Settings category, you'll find an option to Convert Footer (and the Headers too).

Adobe RoboHelp 8: Custom To Do Lists

by Kevin Siegel

Adobe RoboHelp is a wonderful help authoring tool. But it will never be confused with a high-powered project management application like Microsoft Project. However, you might be pleasantly surprised to learn that you can add some project-management type information to your project topics. Once added to the topics, Status information can be viewed in a handy report via Tools > Reports > Project Status.

Show the Properties of any RoboHelp topic. On the Status tab, you'll find a fair amount of information you can add to any topic such as Status, Priority code, number of hours spent working on the topic and even a handy To Do List.

But check out the To Do List (shown below).



You'll notice that the standard items are represented on the To Do List (First Draft, Tested, etc). Nice. But it's a good bet that the list doesn't have an item or two that you need. I'd tell you to go ahead and click the Customize button and add your own items to the list, but there isn't a Customize button anywhere to be seen. Bummer! Thankfully, it's easy to customize the To Do List. The only problem is that the location of the feature isn't obvious.

Choose File > Project Settings. On the General tab, click the Manage button to the right of the To Do List area. Click the Add button, type the name of the Item you'd like to add and press [Enter].



The next time you access the Status tab, you'll see your new items in the To Do List. It really doesn't get any easier than that. And, as mentioned earlier, when you create a Project Status report, information you add to the Status tab will appear.

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Need to learn the basics of Adobe RoboHelp fast? Attend a live, instructor-led, project-based, online training class. Click here for more information.

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