HTML5 - Search by Topic Only?

[straygoat]

Hello all

We would like to be able to search help by topic title only (as some industry-specific terms we have to use appear in far too many places). Is it possible to do this, bearing in mind we can't have a web/server hosted help system due to other factors?

[crdmerge2]

Remove the Search accordion tab, add all your topic titles as Index terms, and rename the "Index" accordion tab to "Search".

The plus in this solution is that as you type the "Search" characters, the "Index-as-Search" jumps to the related listing(s). So the user thinks you've provided Google-type searching!


Good luck,
Leon

[Nita Beck]

The plus in this solution is that as you type the "Search" characters, the "Index-as-Search" jumps to the related listing(s). So the user thinks you've provided Google-type searching!

There is no input box above the Index in HTML5 output in which to type anything, unlike in WebHelp. I've put in a feature request asking that one be added to HTML5. But the user could use the browser's Find feature to jump to hits in the Index.

[crdmerge2]

Ah, missed that HTML5 reference! Never mind...

[sfoley]

We would like to be able to search help by topic title only (as some industry-specific terms we have to use appear in far too many places). Is it possible to do this, bearing in mind we can't have a web/server hosted help system due to other factors?

I don't think you can, without really silly workarounds. For example, you could move all of your content so that each topic uses JavaScript to load the help content on the page ... but that's a lot of scripts, and a lot of work.

However, you could try to improve your search results a different way. If you don't need an actual index, you can add those industry-specific terms as index entries. Convert all of the instances of those terms to index markers throughout your project. Then, in the Performance tab of your HTML5 target, select Exclude Index Entries from Search.

[straygoat]

Damn, that's another downer on the Flare output then

Looks like another feature request is due.

Do feature requests ever get put into the product? I've made quite a few - any chance they will see the light of day?

[sfoley]

Do feature requests ever get put into the product? I've made quite a few - any chance they will see the light of day?

It took something like five or six revisions, but Flare now (finally!) will remember which interface toolbars I hid, instead of always showing all of the toolbars whenever I restarted Flare. I remember filing that as a bug report back in version 2.

For some of the more weighty features, you might have more luck. At a previous employer, MadCap had promised us that Flare would properly handle Unicode characters when exporting to FrameMaker. So we purchased Flare, successfully tested a Japanese translation along with a few other languages, and wrote the documentation set in Flare ... only to find two months later that exporting anything in Simplified Chinese produced lots of nicely formatted square boxes. MadCap ended up fixing this in the next revision, but not before my manager got a decent number of apologies (not to mention a free upgrade for our licenses).

Chances are it will get fixed or included at some point, just don't hold your breath. Adding stop words to the default list sounds rather like a no-brainer for inclusion... eventually.

[straygoat]

Madcap tech support told me that there is a work-around to make sure topic titles are listed first in the search results. The work-around is an old SEO trick which would be penalised by Google nowadays...hidden text.

1. Create a new H style and set the Style>Block>Display to None.

2. In each topic, add the title numerous times at the bottom of the page. They didn't tell us how many times to repeat the title, but I'd guess 10-20 is adequate.

3. Assign the new H style to the text so that it is invisible.

When users search for a term, the headings that contain that term should appear as the most relevant results, as they will have a high keyword density.

I'm still trying to get the details on the weighting criteria for the search results.