Greetings. I have recently swapped to Flare v8 from Robohelp 7. I have over 5 years experience with RH, but am a Flare newbie. I'm not a code developer: my particular geekiness is for words and styles.
My company is working on a greenfield project using Silverlight with a Windows 8 look and feel. I am told the application code is written in XAML.
A few questions:
We want to achieve a single Help System, with the following features.
1. To have conditional read privileges based on licence key and user role, e.g. a single help source, where the end users can only see the modules they have purchased and also where a 'super user' can see API information, administrator-level information, etc. but a 'standard user' can only see the ordinary help topics. We do not want conditional build tagging, as this would result in multiple help systems.
2. To be able to open the Help within the application and not in a separate browser window. We would like something similar to the Flare UI, with a flyout bar that, by default, is unpinned on the margin but opens on a mouseover/click. Also, what output format is appropriate - Webhelp, XPS, something else!? How do the Help topics get inside the application with context sensitivity?
Please can you confirm whether these are possible, and if so - how to go about doing them?
Thanks very
Ron
How Do I...
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nickatwork
- Sr. Propeller Head
- Posts: 457
- Joined: Thu Sep 16, 2010 6:31 am
- Location: London
Re: How Do I...
Hi,
Well to kind of answer both questions in one go.
Flare can't produce help that is going to dynamically display content based on a user's privilages. I used to use RH, and it can't do that either. The 2 products are very similar in this regard.
Your other options would be to create mutliple help output and call the correct one based on a user's access - though you say you don't want to do this - the other option would then be a bit of an answer to your second question.
You want to embed the help within your application. How this displays (sliding window, popup bubbles, whatver) is down to your developers. All Flare will do is spit out content how you tell it. How you choose to display that content is up to you.
Though, if the application you are working on doesn't require a large help system where the user can browse everything then you could instead look at embedding pages of content within the specific page a user is looking at. this would also mean that a user without access to a particular module or page wouldn't see that help content which sort of solves your first problem.
Again, this all requires work from the developers and a LOT of planning to ensure you implement it well. It also means you will not have a large single help system that users can refer to to get additional help apart from the page they are viewing. This may or may not work for your application. But if your company is creating something quite slick then a large help system (I think) would be quite clunky and not really fit the over all sleakness that they are probably going for.
Nick.
Good luck.
Well to kind of answer both questions in one go.
Flare can't produce help that is going to dynamically display content based on a user's privilages. I used to use RH, and it can't do that either. The 2 products are very similar in this regard.
Your other options would be to create mutliple help output and call the correct one based on a user's access - though you say you don't want to do this - the other option would then be a bit of an answer to your second question.
You want to embed the help within your application. How this displays (sliding window, popup bubbles, whatver) is down to your developers. All Flare will do is spit out content how you tell it. How you choose to display that content is up to you.
Though, if the application you are working on doesn't require a large help system where the user can browse everything then you could instead look at embedding pages of content within the specific page a user is looking at. this would also mean that a user without access to a particular module or page wouldn't see that help content which sort of solves your first problem.
Again, this all requires work from the developers and a LOT of planning to ensure you implement it well. It also means you will not have a large single help system that users can refer to to get additional help apart from the page they are viewing. This may or may not work for your application. But if your company is creating something quite slick then a large help system (I think) would be quite clunky and not really fit the over all sleakness that they are probably going for.
Nick.
Good luck.
Re: How Do I...
Thanks Nick!
Your reply is pretty much what my gut feeling was. And yes, the app is intended to be quite sleek and is 'gadget' based rather than having traditional 'window'-based topics. I imagine that the help will be quite lean.
In your experience, am I better off using any particular output - e.g. if they are developing in XAML would I be better off building an XPS help?
Your reply is pretty much what my gut feeling was. And yes, the app is intended to be quite sleek and is 'gadget' based rather than having traditional 'window'-based topics. I imagine that the help will be quite lean.
In your experience, am I better off using any particular output - e.g. if they are developing in XAML would I be better off building an XPS help?
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nickatwork
- Sr. Propeller Head
- Posts: 457
- Joined: Thu Sep 16, 2010 6:31 am
- Location: London
Re: How Do I...
I wouldn't know to be honest.
But I'd expect you probably want to lightest type of help that Flare can produce. I'd discuss with your developers the idea that you have and how best to execute it and this will probably drive what format you need to output to.
I'd suspect that the developers would create the window or pane that the help will be displayed in. In that case, all they would want from you is the actual help content and probably the stylesheet that it requires. This may mean they call a page (html for example) but only pick up the code/content inside the <head> or <body> tags as that is the guts of your help. All the other stuff is layout settings and things they probably don't need.
I'd love to do help like this, I think it is soo much better. but it requires quite a lot of buy-in from developers and IT (sadly mine don't want to spend the time)
Let us know how you get on.
Nick.
But I'd expect you probably want to lightest type of help that Flare can produce. I'd discuss with your developers the idea that you have and how best to execute it and this will probably drive what format you need to output to.
I'd suspect that the developers would create the window or pane that the help will be displayed in. In that case, all they would want from you is the actual help content and probably the stylesheet that it requires. This may mean they call a page (html for example) but only pick up the code/content inside the <head> or <body> tags as that is the guts of your help. All the other stuff is layout settings and things they probably don't need.
I'd love to do help like this, I think it is soo much better. but it requires quite a lot of buy-in from developers and IT (sadly mine don't want to spend the time)
Let us know how you get on.
Nick.
Re: How Do I...
Dynamically displaying/hiding content in a topic (according to privileges) shouldn't be very difficult for a developer.
Where it will get more problematic is if you want to dynamically modify the help framework itself; such as hiding topics from the search results or TOC.
Where it will get more problematic is if you want to dynamically modify the help framework itself; such as hiding topics from the search results or TOC.
Re: How Do I...
Nick, Dave
Thanks very much
Will keep you informed as things progress.
Thanks very much
Will keep you informed as things progress.