DotNetHelp no longer supported in Flare 2019

[henkjans]

Help!!

after upgrading to Flare 2019 my targets (DotNetHelp) are no longer supported.
I can't remember some kind of announcement about this (correct me if I'm wrong).

Is it possible to downgrade to 2018 somehow, so I have some time to rewrite my Help from DotNetHelp to ..... ??

Besides that, I use the powerful "Context Sensitive Help" mechanism of DotNetHelp. So the software call the DotNetHelp file including a tag number, so that DotNetHelp know's where to open the Help file.
Is there a equivalent target which supports this kind of "Context Sensitive Help"??

regards

[Nita Beck]

You can run Flare 2018 r2 and Flare 2019 side by side, although you can't have the same project open in both at the same time. So if you want to continue to use Flare 2018 r2 to build DotNetHelp, you may. That said, if you use any of the new functionality in Flare 2019, such as Micro Content, Flare 2018 r2 will have no idea what to do with it and using it might even cause builds to fail.

Regarding any announcement, I agree that MadCap wasn't terribly loud about announcing that they would be deprecating DotNetHelp. But they did state so in Flare 2018's documentation: https://help.madcapsoftware.com/flare20 ... -Flare.htm

[BedfordWriter]

HTML help targets support CSH. I've been using it for years.

Your developers will have to change the call they make in response to an F1 press, but it's just a couple lines of code.
And, my memory may be blurry, but I recall that my switch from DotNet to HTML help really wasn't difficult. Mostly a matter of changing the target and tweaking the style.

[Nita Beck]

Context sensitive help can also be accomplished with Side Nav, Top Nav, and tripane HTML5 outputs, although these are not compiled help systems such is HTML (aka CHM) help.

[NorthEast]

I'd say the equivalent target is HTML5 help, which supports CSH too, and can be run locally on your PC or online.

I wouldn't really recommend moving to HTML Help (CHM), as it's an extremely old format (has it been updated in the last 10 years?).

[Psider]

I wouldn't really recommend moving to HTML Help (CHM), as it's an extremely old format (has it been updated in the last 10 years?).

Really only security fixes that have reduced functionality since 2004.

http://kb.helpwaregroup.com/ms-html-help/hh_info

[NorthEast]

We still use HTML Help (CHM) in one product, and I find it a real problem as it's locked to using old browser compatibility - I think HTML Help is rendered in IE9 compatiblity mode.
Anyway, this means it doesn't support current CSS standards that will work fine in browsers, so I have to rewrite my CSS specifically for use with HTML Help - e.g. not use web fonts (@font-face) or any CSS3.

[BedfordWriter]

I seem to have introduced a red herring into the discussion by (mistakenly) typing "HTML Help" when I meant the various HTML5 outputs such as Top Nav, Side Nav, and such.
Sorry about that.