Users viewing WebHelp locally and without a webserver

[Kali]

Hello everyone.

I'm using Flare version 8, and I'm in the process of deciding which help output framework would best suit our needs for a multi-platform (i.e. not necessarily Windows) Java application.
To complicate matters, our end users may not have access to the Internet or Intranet, due to rather strict security policies.

Is there any way I can run WebHelp locally (and use contextually sensitive links) from an end user's machine without installing a local WebServer?
I am sorry if this question has been asked before, I couldn't find any existing thread using the forum search tool.

Thanks in advance for your advice!

[i-tietz]

I am sorry if this question has been asked before, I couldn't find any existing thread using the forum search tool.

enter at google:

Code: Select all

Webhelp local site:forums.madcapsoftware.com

[LTinker68]

Is there any way I can run WebHelp locally (and use contextually sensitive links) from an end user's machine without installing a local WebServer?

You only need a web server if you're hosting the help publicly and that's what the end user is accessing (e.g., http://help.yourcompany.com), or if you're building WebHelp Plus output, then the end user would need IIS enabled, running, and properly configured on their computer, so WebHelp Plus probably isn't used except when hosting on a publicly-accessible server.

If your help is just going to run on the end user's computer, then you can use HTML Help (.chm), WebHelp, or HTML5 outputs. However, you'll need to enable Mark of the Web in the target so that Internet Explorer doesn't throw a block when it loads the help from the user's local machine.

The only stumbling block is if you use Feedback with the help output and the user doesn't have Internet connection. I don't know if the Feedback-related elements are hidden in the output if there's no Internet connection (probably not) or if they're just grayed out and the user can't do anything with them (most likely scenario).

[Kali]

Thanks for trying to solve my problem, Lisa.

Found the problem, actually - it was entirely unrelated to needing to run a webserver or services.

It's a mistake with the documentation for CSH for HTML5 in Flare 8 (as seen at: http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare ... lopers.htm)
For HTML5, the URL to use should link to "../Default.htm#(filepath)" rather than ".../Default_CSH#(filepath)", where "Default" is the name of your webhelp.

In contrast, using regular WebHelp (HTML4), the URL to use is ".../Default_CSH#(filepath)".

[HyperMom]

Kali,

This is a little off your original post but I'm interested in knowing how you created this:
../Default.htm#(filepath)
in the first place.

What is your Target Output and settings, please? My developers what to use that, actually:
../Default.htm#(topic which is the filename.htm)

To link to the topic.

I could do this in RoboHelp and didn't know how I was doing it but gave them what they wanted.

And I don't follow what you were getting at here:
It's a mistake with the documentation for CSH for HTML5 in Flare 8 (as seen at: http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare ... lopers.htm)
For HTML5, the URL to use should link to "../Default.htm#(filepath)" rather than ".../Default_CSH#(filepath)", where "Default" is the name of your webhelp.
In contrast, using regular WebHelp (HTML4), the URL to use is ".../Default_CSH#(filepath)".

Any help in trying to generate help that produces that #filename for my developers would be most appreciated!

Thanks,

Mary