MadCap Software Forums

Hi

I am writing a help for a Adobe Flex-based software that runs from an embedded server on a product. The size allotment for the help file is but 1 Mb. We translate our materials into 10 langauges. Currently, my English-only output is @ roughly 475 Kb from the Mobile Help output. There are no images currently in the file.

The HTML (CHM) output compacts the size to a measly 95 Kb, but it looks like through my research that this cannot be opened in a browser window.

Does anyone have a suggestion how I can use the HTML files to achieve a browser-based help output?

many thanks,
Matt

The only way I know of is to download a CHM reader to the browser. This would not work if you have clients who will be opening the files on their own computers.

There are a few browser based CHM viewers as far as I can tell by a quick Google search, but those all appear to require a plugin added to the browser. The small CHM size is achieved through compression. The best bet is to use the mobile output. If that is too large see if you can display a PDF instead assuming that this yields a smaller file size. Other than that the next best thing is a boring text file, which will not provide for any navigational help.

The IE can open topics inside a chm - at least, when the chm is on a local drive. If it's in the internet ... no idea.
And that does NOT include the index, the search and the TOC!

If you want to try: Rightclick on a topic in chm file and open the properties. You can select the URL path with the mouse. You can do that even if you cannot see the end of it, because only two lines are displayed - just start at the beginning of the path (the WHOLE path - start at the mk:... !) and pull the mouse downward.