I have been asked a weird question from my management and I will try to explain it best out here. So, we are in the process of evaluating Madcap Flare to replace our current help system. I may add here that I have an absolute basic knowledge of Flare...still learning (a lot) on my way through. I have created an HTML5 Output Sample. Now what we want is to display that output upon a click of a menu option from within our application (web-based). How can I achieve that? If I need help from a developer, what should I be asking for them to look into? I am totally confused on what and where to start.
HTML5 output is a set of files that make up a web site. You view it in a browser.
You have several options, but since you have a web app, you have fewer choices than you might have with a traditional desktop app.
First, the files need to be delivered somewhere. This could be within the user's web server (where the web app is installed) or your own web server. If you're hosting the app yourself then you only have the option of hosting the help also. With a desktop app you also have the option of delivering the set of files alongside the app and displaying them locally.
Second, the help needs to be displayed. For web apps, this is almost always in a frame or new window within the browser where the app is already running. You're going to call a URL which depends on where the help is installed, but will go to the default.htm (or whatever you named your output in the target) in the main folder of the output. With a desktop app you have many options all of which amount to opening a browser somehow to display the help.
If you are doing context-sensitive help (different topics for different screens in your app) you can define identifiers and mapped numeric values which correspond to the different screens and are linked to specific topics or bookmarks within topic in your help. Add #cshid= and the identifier or numeric value after the URL for the main page to open the help to that destination. It's also possible to put the path within the project to the destination topic after that # but using context-sensitive map IDs will give you more flexibility to restructure the help later.
