Converting from .hlp to Web Help

[arnold_burian]

Quick question-

We're using RoboHelp X5, and have a number of projects to update/convert from .hlp to WebHelp (in preparation for Vista).

Any suggestions/thoughts/tips on this conversion? I exported one of the projects to WebHelp, and it looks ok. Is there a shortcut to preserving the links from the software to the help topics?

Thank you!

-Arnold Burian

[Peter Grainge]

Welcome to the forum.

The calls to the help will need to be changed in your application's code and there is no easy way that I have seen.

Where will your application be installed, on the client PC or on a server? I ask as that sort of dictates the help type you use, CHM or webhelp.

[arnold_burian]

Thanks, Peter-

We've (currently) ecided to go with the WebHelp output in RoboHelp. This is for a Windows desktop application.

-A

[Peter Grainge]

Then your users are going to hit problems. Create a webhelp output on your hard disk and see what happens when you run it. You will get a yellow information bar and have to select to allow active content to run. To avoid the bar, users can allow it to run on each occasion or they can change their IE settings but first you have to tell them that and second their administrators might not be too happy about it.

With RH6 you can add a Mark of the Web that gets around that.

[arnold_burian]

Peter-

Thanks. You're right. Any suggestions for distributing WebHelp with a desktop client?

-A

[prhmusic1]

We just released our first version of our Desktop app with WebHelp that gets installed on the PC. The warning Peter mentioned applies to PCs running Windows XP, Service Pack 2. I include instructions on my default topic that instruct the user what to do.

We use InstallShield to build our setup.exe file. I have learned that InstallShield is 'file-specific' meaning that you have to tell InstallShield where to put each file. Be aware of that if you are using InstallShield.

Additionally, I took the opportunity of the WinHelp to HTML conversion to combine over 100 HLP files into a single WebHelp system. That has turned out to be the best move I could have ever made.

We didn't know it at the time, but we ran into this issue when setting up the calls to open Help from the app:
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From: HATT@yahoogroups.com [mailto:HATT@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Janet
Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2007 9:59 AM
To: HATT@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [HATT] Re: Webhelp and Firefox Browser
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<snip>
when the browser is called from a desktop application (but not from a web application). You end up with two browser windows, one blank and one with correct content. This is because the RoboHelp API code opens a browser window through the operating system, and then the WebHelp code opens a new window and tries to close the old window from Javascript. Strict browsers such as FireFox and recent versions of IE don't allow that, as it's a potential security hole. This is not really a problem with the browser so much as it is RoboHelp relying on the insecure behavior that IE provided when RoboHelp was written. I don't know if this has changed in the new RH 6.

See http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/messageview.cfm?forumid=65&catid=451&threadid=943575&hi... for discussion of this issue.
--Janet
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If you have any other specific questions or issues come up, don't hesitate to ask.

Paul Hanson
Technical Writer
RoboHelp ACE - http://www.macromedia.com/support/forums/team_macromedia/robohelp.html
Quintrex Data Systems http://www.quintrex.com
email: phanson at quintrex.com