Need plain HTML without frames or xml or javascript

[asbahr]

My company would like to put the help system up on our website. We currently distribute help with the product as WebHelp and that has worked very well. However, there are many restrictions when putting the help on the website. I cannot use any frames, nor can I use the XML files that control TOC and Index. I realize this defeats the purpose of using the tool, but I need to present all possible options at our next meeting.

I have tried the XHTML target and it looks like something I could use. The issue I am having is that none of the cross reference links work once I build the target. The only links that work are the ones generated by Flare for the TOC (GENTOC1, GENTOC2).

Can anyone tell me why those links don't work? Also, why is formatting lost on bullets?

Thanks for any help you can give me.
Ana

[asbahr]

I decided to upgrade to Flare 6.0 and use the new Mobile target. This seems to solve the majority of the issues we were having since it doesn't use frames.

Ana

[LTinker68]

Just an FYI that the mobile skin forces you into some behavior because it's designed to work on mobile devices, not a standard computer using a full-size browser.

It is possible to generate help without the frames. One of the MVPs, doc_guy, designed his personal website that way (http://www.paulpehrson.com).

[Beryl]

I find myself in somewhat the same situation. I need to provide straight HTML for inputting into a software tool (QT). I am trying to set up a process where the engineers create text in Word, I suck it into Frame, and return clean HTML.

Can you provide a pointer to a how-to, or should I contact doc_guy directly?

Just an FYI that the mobile skin forces you into some behavior because it's designed to work on mobile devices, not a standard computer using a full-size browser.

It is possible to generate help without the frames. One of the MVPs, doc_guy, designed his personal website that way (http://www.paulpehrson.com).

[LTinker68]

I just did this as a quick test, so I may have missed something... And you may not need to do all of these steps -- I didn't test the output at every stage, so some things I did may be unnecessary.

Create a new skin. On the General tab, disable all the accordion options. On the WebHelp Setup tab, set the pane size to 0 and the number of accordion items to 0. In the Styles tab, go to Frame, then click on Toolbar, and set its height to 0.

In your WebHelp target, point it to the new skin, then build the target. I did see the left nav pane flash on the screen briefly, but that could just be because of settings on my computer and the user may not even see that flash on the screen, but you'll have to test. Note that even though I set those items to not appear, files are still created to support those features because I didn't actually disabled them but rather just set their sizes really small. And you'll get errors if you delete the Skin folder in the output, so you'll need to leave them in there for now.

Long term, submit a feature request at http://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx asking for the ability to build WebHelp output without a skin (i.e., the frameset) and without unnecessary files being created (i.e., if you don't want a skin then you don't want the files to support a skin).

[Beryl]

Woo Hoo!

I just did this as a quick test, so I may have missed something... And you may not need to do all of these steps -- I didn't test the output at every stage, so some things I did may be unnecessary.

[NorthEast]

Hmm... if you don't want the WebHelp frame, then why even bother opening it in the first place?
You can just open the topic htm files directly without the frameset.

(Make sure you switch off the 'show navigation link...' settings in the skin.)


As LTinker mentioned for her suggestion, the frameset may be briefly visible when you open the help; but it is even more noticeable if an IE security warning is displayed, as the framset is visible until the user clears the message.

[LTinker68]

Hmm... if you don't want the WebHelp frame, then why even bother opening it in the first place?
You can just open the topic htm files directly without the frameset.

It is usually desirable to have your "home" topic be default.htm or index.htm, which is why he's asking for it without the frameset, because there is already a default.htm file created when you build. But you could name your "home" page or welcome page or whatever default.htm -- you'd just be calling the default.htm page under the Content folder instead of the one in the root of the Output folder.

As LTinker mentioned for her suggestion, the frameset may be briefly visible when you open the help; but it is even more noticeable if an IE security warning is displayed, as the framset is visible until the user clears the message.

Unless you enable MOTW, but the frameset -- the nav pane at least -- will still flash briefly.

[NorthEast]

Hmm... if you don't want the WebHelp frame, then why even bother opening it in the first place?
You can just open the topic htm files directly without the frameset.

It is usually desirable to have your "home" topic be default.htm or index.htm, which is why he's asking for it without the frameset, because there is already a default.htm file created when you build. But you could name your "home" page or welcome page or whatever default.htm -- you'd just be calling the default.htm page under the Content folder instead of the one in the root of the Output folder.

I don't follow you.

Your suggestion was to set all the skin options so that the WebHelp frameset is invisible (mostly); but you're still opening the topic inside the frameset (i.e. opening default.htm in the root folder).

My point was that if you don't want the frameset, then you don't need to change all the skin settings - just don't open the frameset in the first place and link to the appropriate topic directly (in the content folder).

[Pernice]

Just an FYI that the mobile skin forces you into some behavior because it's designed to work on mobile devices, not a standard computer using a full-size browser.

Lisa, I'd be very grateful if you could elaborate on what you are forced to do. In other words, what are the limitations of using the Mobile output format? I am a complete newbie to Flare and to HTML and CSS, but I think I read somewhere that you could pretty much do whatever you wanted with skins and styles in Flare, the limit being ones knowledge of HTML and CSS.

[LTinker68]

I haven't played with the mobile output that much, but I'm assuming there are some features you won't be able to use, wouldn't want to use, or that just aren't available.

And to use an old maxim, just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. You could use the same WebHelp output you have now for your mobile users, but you really shouldn't. As an example, go to http://kb.madcapsoftware.com on your mobile phone. It does work. You see the tri-pane, and you can move around and interact with it, but in order to select something in the nav pane, you have to zoom way in and select it, then zoom out and pan over to see the topic that appeared. Then to go to the Search pane you have to zoom and pan to the bottom left, and so on. Your customers would not like that. Now compare that to http://kb.madcapsoftware.com/mobile. You'll notice there isn't a lot of color changes in hyperlinks since you can't exactly hover, the TOC and Search are the only nav features left (although I would recommend a glossary), the fonts are larger, any images to click on have to be large enough for fingers to tap, etc. All in all, there is a much different mindset for designing mobile help as opposed to standard help.

BTW, I have one of the newer smartphones with the larger screen. Navigating the full help on a smaller smartphone would have been even worse.

[sdcinvan]

I realize this is a really old thread but I was searching for how to avoid the frameset for a one page document that I have produced with Flare v10.x.

This is a specifications sheet and in this case, I just want the plain HTML without the frameset (all the search stuff, buttons, etc.). By looking at the HTML5 output, it was easy to discover that the only section required (for plain HTML) is the ..\Content folder.

In other words

Code: Select all

..\Content
    filespec.html
    \Resources

Discard everything else and you got yourself just the page content. Love it when things fall together this nicely.