Does it make sense to use Air with webhelp?

[Rob8231]

I have used RoboHelp HTML help (.chm) to support our fat client product for several years now. We are now moving our product to the cloud as a web application. Consequently I am converting our help to webhelp. (I am using RoboHelp of course.) Question is, does it make sense to use Air? The whole idea of going to the cloud is that we want our customers to be able to access our application from any internet connected device. Is Air something we load on our server, or must it be downloaded onto every computer that accesses our application? I like the dynamic skin with commenting that Air offers, but I don't want to force our customers to have download someting like an Air application before they can view our help.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

No, there’s 2 flavours of AIR Help – one’s locally-installed (and allows commenting) that has to have the AIR runtime installed, the other’s browser-based (and doesn’t have commenting unless, IIRC, you have it deployed on a webserver running RH Server) and has no installed parts – see Peter Grainge’s site about AIR (grainge.org).

[Peter Grainge]

Browser based AIR help does not have commenting, whether or not you have RoboHelp Server.

You need to consider either WebHelp or, if you have RoboHelp 10, a desktop layout in the Multiscreen HTML5 layouts.

WebHelp is tried and tested and can be customised quite easily. Multiscreen HTML5 allows you to output the help in a way that can be viewed on phones, tablets or desktops. Each has a different layout so the appearance can be different on each device. In your case you currently only need a desktop layout so the advantages are pretty much just more modern appearance and the fact that it is not a tripane format. Neither of those are too compelling  so webhelp may be the best option right now.

In time though it may be that your customers will need to access parts of your software from a phone. It will be easy for you to change your output from webhelp to multiscreen to cover that but there's one little catch. Your developers would need to change all the calls to the help For that reason you might want to discuss this with them before you commit.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Rob8231]

Peter,

Thank you, this is helpful.

Robert Brown, ABC

Instructional Designer / Program Manager

[Peter Grainge]

Good but posting your contact details is not, unless you want spam offering various ways of changing your body or getting an inheritance from some government official who has tracked you down as the only beneficiary of a will. I have removed that information on this occasion.

Never post that information on any forum.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Rob8231]

Thanks for the cautionary tip.