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Looking for creative Webhelp examples, licensing question

Guest
Sep 02, 2017 Sep 02, 2017

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Hi  -  I think Robohelp will make a good output for our sales manuals. I'm looking for some good examples of professional WebHelp systems online, to demo to management. We have a lot of manuals and guides, I think they would be merged.

And it's proprietary- so, besides examples, I need to know, can I protect them so the user has to click "ok" in the licensing in order to read them?

TIA, Cindy S.

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Community Expert ,
Sep 03, 2017 Sep 03, 2017

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Big question without knowing what you want your sales material to contain and whether print is an important part of what you want to create.InDesign is what my last employer used for printed marketing and sales materials as its better at creating artistic layouts. We used RoboHelp for the online help about using the products. I don't know what the website people used.

It's difficult to point to good online examples for precisely the reason behind you second question, protection of proprietary content within the online help, RoboHelp's primary use. However, surely sales material is not proprietary?

Now if you are talking about user guides covering how to use the products after they have been sold, then that is very much RoboHelp's territory and I have seen some excellent work, just not stuff that can be shared.

On the protection side, I can't see how clicking a simple OK protects anything. Did you never pretend to be older than you were to get into some event or have a drink? The sort of protection you would need is typically something that your developers would put in place.RoboHelp Server has some features that might help but without knowing who your users are, I can't say it would be what you want. It adds a lot to the cost.

I hope that helps a little.


See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

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LEGEND ,
Sep 03, 2017 Sep 03, 2017

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As far as "Creative", that part is very subjective. But here's one example where I manage one of my web sites using RoboHelp. Note, however, it's Responsive HTML 5 and not "WebHelp".

http://www.robowizard.com

Then again, when you say WebHelp, those of us that have been around the product since forever ago think of a specific output type from RoboHelp that is named WebHelp. You could be meaning simply content presented via a browser and typically served up from the web.

Cheers... Rick

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Guest
Sep 08, 2017 Sep 08, 2017

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Thanks Peter and Rick for responding. I waited a bit, for examples. No one (50 views so far) has a webhelp, Responsive HTML 5 or other kind of example to share?

There are a lot of pages to merge, including some service manuals the owners wanted some kind of button to click to access. I was hoping for something more than an alert button.  It doesn't have to be high or perfect security, just an acknowledgment that it's licensed. Maybe redirect the user to the front page.

  1. Peter, yes, users will be printing them. Can they print an entire manual from Webhelp or Robohelp?
  2. Rick, I would be interested in seeing the example you mentioned.Can you provide a link?

I was looking for some good examples of Robohelp to persuade management in making a purchase.  I've installed a trial copy, it looks rather bland and unremarkable, and it's not clear how to do these things. thanks!

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LEGEND ,
Sep 08, 2017 Sep 08, 2017

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Ahhh, so sorry. I thought I had a link in there. Looks like I didn't.

Click here to view

Cheers... Rick

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Community Expert ,
Sep 09, 2017 Sep 09, 2017

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To share an output, it has to be uploaded to a web server and the majority of outputs are proprietary information so it's not publicly accessible. Whilst you only want a simple acknowledgement of the licence, that doesn't suit most people. Hence the lack of links.

If you only want a simple acknowledgement and it is a knowledge base that will always be accessed by opening the help with the same topic, then you could put a notice in that topic. Of course someone could send another user a link to another topic and that would bypass the default topic.The whole thing really depends on who has access and who controls the server it is sitting on. If you control the latter, then the administrators can come up with some access control.

Are you saying the samples are bland? They are deliberately aimed at the sort of level that most people want. Make them complex and you put people off at the trial stage, which is hardly the objective. If you didn't see them, give them a try. Click Open on the RoboHelp Starter page and then click Samples in the ribbon on the left. Generate an HTML5 responsive layout using the supplied layouts.

You comment that it's not clear how to do these things. RoboHelp is one of the easiest authoring tools to learn but it does require some training. You wouldn't expect someone to walk in off the street with no previous knowledge of designing a web site and create one for you. Much the same with creating RoboHelp, some training is needed. You can self teach but obviously it will be basic stuff at first and progress to advanced staff as you learn and it will take longer.

The user can print individual topics but not the whole output. From what you say that would probably require a few reams of paper anyway. Think of the RoboHelp output as a website that you can browse around. Web sites don't have a Print All button.What you can do is provide links to PDF files that they can download for print and they can contain whatever you want.

Ultimately it all comes down to the time and effort you can put into making it look good. Rather like the difference between slipping on a pair of jeans and a top to go out or dressing up for an occasion.

Hope that helps and do come back with specifics.


See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

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Contributor ,
Sep 11, 2017 Sep 11, 2017

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I've been following this thread with interest but didn't contribute until now because I had some work things to get completed.

That said, after working with RH for a zillion years (grin), I know that I can google any of the 'common' files that are published to the server when publishing WebHelp output and find some examples. To help you out, I googled "whmsg.js" and, while I'm not saying the following will match your guidelines, I did find 4 WebHelp systems you can look at online.

First, this is my initial google result: - https://www.google.com/search?num=20&newwindow=1&source=hp&q=whmsg.js&oq=whmsg.js&gs_l=psy-ab.3...30...  - and just that page alone is not going to get you what you want. You have to do a little sleuthing. For example, I took this hit:

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https://www.datamax-oneil.com/assets/netirarm_help/NETira%20Remote%20Manager.log

|

and removed "NETira Remote Manager.log" from it, which took me to here:

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Index of /assets/netirarm_help

|

Then I randomly selected "About.htm", which took me here:

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About

|

From there, I clicked "Show" to see the TOC & to this page:

|

NETira Remote Manager

|

I had to do similar sleuthing to view these other examples:

  1. http://h30359.www3.hpe.com/online_help/Autonomy%20Digital/Connected%20Backup/Connected%20Backup/7.5/...
  2. http://celade.cepal.org/redatam/pryesp/cairo/WebHelp/Manual%20CIPD/cipd_manual.htm
  3. http://www.easycom-aura.com/data/webhelp/EN_SqliPlug/sqliplug.htm#connection_error_11001_hex2af9_hos...

Hope this helps.

Paul Hanson

Iowa

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Community Expert ,
Sep 12, 2017 Sep 12, 2017

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@Paul

You might want to check some of those links, not going where you intended.

@Cindy

The RoboHelp Tour is an HTML5 output but I haven't promoted it before as I don't regard it as an awesome bit of work. It is purely functional but maybe it gives you some idea of how things work.


See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

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Contributor ,
Sep 12, 2017 Sep 12, 2017

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Peter - I went through the links again and took a screenshot of what I was seeing on my laptop - if you click the link and don't see what I show, please let me know.

First, this is my initial google result: - https://www.google.com/search?num=20&newwindow=1&source=hp&q=whmsg.js&oq=whmsg.js&gs_l=psy -ab.3...3...  -

2017_09_12_RH_Forum_01.jpg

and just that page alone is not going to get you what you want. You have to do a little sleuthing. For example, I took this hit:

|

https://www.datamax-oneil.com/assets/netirarm_help/NETira%20Remote%20Manager.log

2017_09_12_RH_Forum_02.jpg|

and removed "NETira Remote Manager.log" from it, which took me to here:

|

Index of /assets/netirarm_help

2017_09_12_RH_Forum_03.jpg|

Then I randomly selected "About.htm", which took me here:

|

About

2017_09_12_RH_Forum_10.jpg|

From there, I clicked "Show" to see the TOC & to this page:

|

NETira Remote Manager

2017_09_12_RH_Forum_04.jpg

|

I had to do similar sleuthing to view these other examples:

http://h30359.www3.hpe.com/online_help/Autonomy%20Digital/Connected%20Backup/Connected%20B ackup/7.5...2017_09_12_RH_Forum_05.jpg

http://celade.cepal.org/redatam/pryesp/cairo/WebHelp/Manual%20CIPD/cipd_manual.htm

2017_09_12_RH_Forum_06.jpg

http://www.easycom-aura.com/data/webhelp/EN_SqliPlug/sqliplug.htm#connection_error_11001_h ex2af9_ho...

2017_09_12_RH_Forum_07.jpg

Hope this helps.

Paul Hanson

Iowa

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Community Expert ,
Sep 12, 2017 Sep 12, 2017

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With you now Paul. My error.


See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

Help others by clicking Correct Answer if the question is answered. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

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Guest
Sep 25, 2017 Sep 25, 2017

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Thank you Rick and Peter, your sites and skins are great, there is a lot of work there. I did some searching using your method, Paul, thank you.

Peter, we hadn't decided exactly how a license acknowledgement would work, like what\how would be the alternative be if they didn't click "ok". Tech says there is no short answer (like htaccess), no surprise there.

For printing, we've been generating new PDFs for each set of data tables, but lots of overlapping data is repeated in each set, which is confusing. I was hoping to group both data and printing.

Here are some of the Webhelp files I have found searching using Paul's method:

They are all very similar, I'm trying it out and adjusting before my trial expires. Thanks so much for your help, I have a lot of learning to do!

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Contributor ,
Oct 03, 2017 Oct 03, 2017

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Hi -

I can offer one Webhelp system that may be of interest; this set of billing manuals and claim form instructions for the State of Alaska Medicaid system. I don't maintain it any more, and entropy has set in a bit.

I used a bookshelf image to provide access to the volumes, each a part of one large RoboHelp project. No merging, in the RH sense. Many pages are re-used, via the Categories, if I recall. Some parts no longer work, e.g., the Print Book tool only works in IE now.

A few books take you to PDF files. They have the Acrobat logo on the book icon. They seem to have lost their click-through agreements.

Yes, also, you should see a click-through agreement when you visit any provider's manual. Delete your cookie if you don't want to wait 3 days for it to ask again.

AK Provider Billing Manuals

And, Hi to Rick and Peter!!

Best to you -

Roger

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Guest
Oct 07, 2017 Oct 07, 2017

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Thanks, Rodger! I messaged you with some questions.

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Explorer ,
Oct 16, 2018 Oct 16, 2018

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Hi Cindy,

even though this topic is old, I thought I'd chime in with our own "creative" responsive HTML5 help (using a heavily modified version of the "Indigo" responsive Layout, which is available from RH 2017 on): https://help.celum.com/mpm/en/

You can see, there are a lot of design possibilities and even possibilities to plug in custom JavaScript, but it needs some advanced HTML/JS skills and takes some getting used to because the default template files for the RoboHelp template can be overwhelming at first.

We don't have any "protection" for the help, other than not submitting a sitemap to Google, so the help is currently only accessible if the link is known or from the application which it is for.

Cheers, Birgit

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New Here ,
Oct 21, 2018 Oct 21, 2018

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Hi Birgit,

Your site looks great. Clean. Polished.

I'm new to RoboHelp so if you don't mind me asking, are you saying that your site required a lot of custom HTML/JS to get it to where it is?

Thanks,

Will

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Explorer ,
Oct 22, 2018 Oct 22, 2018

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LATEST

Hey Will,

I don't mind you asking . I'll give you a short overview of which customizings I made to the Indigo layout to get it into this shape:

  • The TOC was moved from the right side to the left side via CSS (in layout.css)
  • On the front/home page, the Glossary button was restyled to look kind of like a TOC-entry (in custom-toc_images.css or whatever the name of that file is)
  • On the topic page, the Glossary button was restyled to look kind of like a TOC entry, with a separateor underneath (in layout.css / theme-1.css)
  • I added elements to the footer in topic.slp and homepage.slp. The texts are coming from the message bundles in RoboHelp.
  • I removed the Favorites panel and Favorites buttons, cause they were not wanted.
  • The PM at the time did not want to use Dynamic Content Filters for switching between "mobile" and "desktop" content (the functionality of our application differs between mobile and desktop), so I created a JS file and a CSS class for mobile and one for desktop. In the JS file, I iterate through every element with either class assigned (within the current topic file) and show/hide the elements depending on the current template body class.
  • The other big thing was the language chooser, which is in the top right corner of the help system. We maintain the English and German projects in two separate projects and generate them into folders "en" and "de". Custom JS then replaces the current language with the desired language in the topic URL and forwards to the same topic in the other language when you click on the language button. The links ("EN" and "DE") are both defined in the topic/homepage.slp and hidden via JS depending on the current language. There are definitely more elegant ways to handle this, this is just what I came up with.

Generally, it all depends on what your requirements are. If your PMs (or whoever) wants a lot of extra stuff in the help or wants the look and feel changed a lot (e.g. moving elements around, like ours did with the TOC and Glossary), you may not get around extensive customizations.

Thankfully, it's pretty easy to embed custom JS into either the layout (just add the link to the homepage.slp or topic.slp header) or all the topic files themselves (add the link in the master page's header section and apply the master page during help generation).

Hope this gives you an overview, if you're interested in details you can always send me a private message.

Cheers, Birgit

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