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All existing customers of Adobe Technical Communication Suite, Adobe FrameMaker and Adobe RoboHelp are eligible to take advantage of a limited promotional offer from Adobe. You can purchase subscription licenses of Adobe Technical Communication Suite 5 at 40% off for an entire year.

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Adobe RoboHelp 11: Responsive HTML5

by Kevin Siegel   

When I teach my two-day Adobe RoboHelp class, students quickly learn that they need to generate a Layout (via the Single Source Layouts pod) before they can deliver usable Help content to their users.

During the class, attendees learn the strengths and weaknesses of each type of layout. For instance, they learn that WebHelp is excellent if users will be accessing the Help content over the internet and they're using computers running Windows or the Mac OS. 

WebHelp, while offering excellent cross-platform and cross-browser support, does not support users who are using mobile devices such as the iPad or iPhone. 

When Adobe released RoboHelp 10, one of the biggest innovations was Multiscreen HTML5. Since content generated using the Multiscreen HTML5 layout displays across mobile devices, Help authors can support all sorts of display sizes. The problem with Multiscreen HTML5 is that prior to generating the content, RoboHelp developers need to take the size of the user's display into account. In addition, customizing the look and feel of the Multiscreen HTML5 layouts isn't easy since you don't have access to an area like the WebHelp Skin Editor (which makes customizing a WebHelp skin a snap).

Adobe RoboHelp 11, which was just released a few weeks ago, added a new, very exciting layout to the Single Source Layouts pod: Responsive HTML5. With this layout, you don't have to take the variety of screen sizes users might use into account. If the user is viewing your content on a desktop, they will automatically see an appropriate arrangement of the screen components; if they view your content on an iPhone or Android phone, they will see the components resized and rearranged in a layout to best suit the smaller display size.

Here's how Responsive HTML5 works. First, visit the Single Source Layouts pod and double-click the Responsive HTML5 layout. The layout appears by default within new RoboHelp projects. In legacy projects that have been upgraded to RoboHelp 11, click the Create Layout tool (shown below). Select Responsive HTML5 from the Output type drop-down menu and click the OK button.

Similar to WebHelp, you can specify an initial look and feel for your Responsive HTML5 layout by clicking the Gallery button.

There are two designs in the Gallery area and you can download more via the link at the right of the dialog box. In addition, as you'll see in a moment, you can easily customize the layout.

After selecting a layout from the Gallery, you will be presented with a series of screens that allow you to easily customize many components that make up the original design. What I really like about this area is that the Adobe engineers have labelled everything so you know what each area controls.

 

Generate the layout and it will open in your default web browser like WebHelp, FlashHelp, or Multiscreen HTML5. In the image below, I'm viewing the Responsive HTML5 output on a desktop computer and the display is pretty large. With a larger workspace, notice that there is a navigation area at the left of the browser window. 

In the image below, I've resized my browser window to a size more appropriate for a tablet (such as the iPad, Kindle Fire or Microsoft Surface). Notice that the navigation icons have bounced to the right, responding automatically to the size of my display.

 

And in the image below, I've resized my Help window again. This time the navigation icons have dropped to the bottom of my display. 

As I continued to resize the browser to simulate various screen displays, the icons got smaller and were positioned appropriately for the size of the display.

  

Of all the layouts I've used in RoboHelp over the years, I firmly believe that Responsive HTML5 is the absolute top of the mark. While WebHelp is currently the industry standard when it comes to generating Single Source Layouts, I expect Responsive HTML5 to vault into the top spot very quickly.

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Looking for training on Adobe RoboHelp? IconLogic offers live, online Adobe RoboHelp classes each month for both RoboHelp 10 and the new RoboHelp 11. We can also bring the same great training onsite to your facility. Interested? Contact us for details.

Adobe RoboHelp 11: Sharing Resources via Dropbox

by Kevin Siegel

 

Adobe released Adobe RoboHelp 11 last week. Over the next few weeks, I'll be covering some of hottest new features. This week: sharing resources via the Cloud (specifically, with Dropbox).

 

Sharing resources isn't a new concept in RoboHelp. In fact, the Resource Manager pod has been around for the past few versions of RoboHelp. What's new in RoboHelp 11 is the ability to specify a Dropbox as a folder on the Resource Manager.

 

To begin, visited Dropbox.com and created an account. I also created a folder in Dropbox and set it up as a share object (both tasks, creating and sharing the folder, were simple and took mere seconds).

 

Once my Dropbox account had been set up, I started RoboHelp 11 and chose View > Pods > Resource Manager. From the top of the Resource Manager pod, I clicked the Add Shared Location tool.

 

In the Add Shared Location dialog box, I clicked theLocation type drop-down menu and selected Dropbox. (Each time I've performed this step over the past few weeks, RoboHelp has consistently loaded my Dropbox folder and Path for me. Alternatively, you can click the Browse button and manually locate your Dropbox folder.)

 

The next step was to add content to my shared Dropbox folder on the RoboHelp Resource Manager. My shared Dropbox folder is called SharedRoboHelpTopics. When I dragged a topic (Alcohol_Policy) to the shared folder, I was delighted to see that in addition to the topic, the Cascading Style Sheet being used by the topic (policies.css) was also added to the shared folder.

 

 

One of my team members (Biff Bifferson), who is located in another state, was working on a RoboHelp project and needed to use some of my content. While we don't share a network connection, we both have Dropbox accounts. I accessed my Dropbox account and sent Biff an invite to my SharedRoboHelpTopics folder.

 

Biff checked his email and added the SharedRoboHelpTopics folder to his Dropbox. Biff then used RoboHelp's Resource Manager pod to add his Dropbox as a Shared Location.

 

Since his Dropbox included my shared folder, Biff's Resource Manager immediately displayed my shared resources.

 

 

To add my shared content to his RoboHelp project, Biff right-clicked the Alcohol_Policy topic on the Resource Manager pod and chose Add to Project.

 

 

Like magic, my content was now being used in two projects in two different locations. What do you think? Cool?

 

But then... then... I edited the topic on my computer. (I know, crazy right?)

 

 

My Resource Manager alerted me that my shared assets weren't synchronized (via the red icon shown in the image below). When content isn't synchronized, it's likely that team members aren't using the same content.

 

 

Because I wanted to ensure that both Biff and I were working with the same assets, I right-clicked the topic on my Resources Manager and selected Sync.

 

 

Green check marks indicated that all was well between the content in my RoboHelp project and the assets in my Dropbox. But I was curious to learn if Biff actually got the updated content in his project. And if so, what was his experience? Was it painful?

 

 

It turns out that Biff's experience was almost, well, routine. He told me that when he opened his project with RoboHelp 11 later that day, he was greeted with the Linked Resource Notification dialog box shown below. All he had to do was click the Update button and his content was automatically synchronized with mine. In a word... that's awesome!

 

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Looking for training on Adobe RoboHelp? IconLogic offers live, online Adobe RoboHelp classes each month for both RoboHelp 10 and the new RoboHelp 11. We can also bring the same great training onsite to your facility. Interested? Contact us for details.

Adobe RoboHelp: Favicons

by Kevin Siegel

During my online RoboHelp classes, students frequently ask for ways to brand a generated WebHelp layout. There are multiple ways to add a corporate identity to a layout including customizing a WebHelp skin and adding a copyright notice within the footer of a master page.

While working with skins and master pages is easy enough, one of the fastest ways to brand WebHelp is also the easiest: add a Favicon. A Favicon is an icon that appears in a browser's address bar or next to the site name in a bookmark list. In the image below, you can see the title of a generated layout (Technical Communications) as it appears in a Firefox tab. Just to the left of the title is a generic Favicon.

To add your logo as a Favicon, show the Properties of a RoboHelp WebHelp layout (on the Single Source Layouts pod, right-click a WebHelp layout and choose Properties).

Select the General category and you'll find the Favicon field just below the Title Bar field.

Click the Browse button and open the Favicon image you'd like to use. In the image below, I've loaded a Favicon I created called IcoFile.ico. You can use png, ico, or gif images as Favicons.

Generate the layout and view the results. You'll see your corporate Favicon in the tab or title bar of the web page in place of the default image.

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Looking for training on Adobe RoboHelp? IconLogic offers live, online Adobe RoboHelp classes each month.

Adobe RoboHelp: Pining to Pin?

by Kevin Siegel  

When I use a program frequently, I tend to pin the program to my Taskbar for quick access. If you've never pinned an application to the Taskbar, it's a simple process. On Windows 7, click the Start button on the Taskbar and find the program you'd like to pin. Instead of starting the application, right-click the application's icon and choose Pin to Taskbar. From that point forward, you will be able to start the application by clicking its shortcut on the Taskbar. 

  

In the image below, you can see icons for applications that I use every day, and have pinned to my Taskbar. (For instance, at the far right you can see Adobe Captivate  and Adobe FrameMaker.)

Of course, I use Adobe RoboHelp every day too. And I was bummed out when I went to pin RoboHelp to my Taskbar and did not see the Pin to Taskbar menu item. What gives? Was there something within RoboHelp's code that prevented pinning? Was my Taskbar somehow inadequate? Perhaps there is a limit to the number of applications I am allowed to pin?

It turns out that the issue is quite simple. According to the folks at Adobe (who I contacted about this), applications containing the word "help" cannot be pinned to the Taskbar. Since RoboHelp is called, well... RoboHelp, that's the end of that.

Not so fast...

While applications with the word "Help" in the name cannot be pinned to the Taskbar, the folks at Adobe told me that it's simple enough to change RoboHelp's name on the computer (without fouling up anything at all).

Find RoboHelp's application icon by clicking Start (just as you would any other application). Once again, don't start the application. Instead, right-click the icon and choose Properties. On the General tab, change the name to something similar to RoboHelp HTML, except don't use Help. I changed my RoboHelp icon to simply RoboHTML.

  

After clicking the OK button, I was able to right-click the RoboHTML icon and, eureka, Pin toTaskbar was an available menu item. I am happy to report that RoboHelp (I mean RoboHTML) is now in its rightful home, alongside Captivate and FrameMaker.

 

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Looking to learn Adobe RoboHelp quickly? I offer a live, online class covering RoboHelp once each month. It's a two-day class, and provides an awesome jump-start to using this fantastic tool.