Web Help Multiple Versions

[sdpitts]

We have a product the has multiple versions ( 3.a, 3.b, 3.c, etc.). We want to publish the help system for all versions online. We would like to know if it is possible to create a single web help that contains the help for all versions and provide the ability to select the required version number? After selecting the version, the TOC, indexes and searches would be limited to the selected version.
This would be similar to the MSDN help( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... etime.aspx ) that allows the user to select help from other versions list.
If the this is not possible, what are the best practices for publishing web help when multiple help versions must be available until the product version is retired?

[whunter]

I'm not sure if Flare togglers can be used to do what you want there or not, but even if they could it sounds like it would be a lot of work to maintain multiple versions that way.

Otherwise, you would generate a separate WebHelp for each version, post them all on your web site, and then set up your web site to provide some mechanism for the user to select the right version. If users are getting there through the software, then the software should be configured to point to the appropriate version.

[RamonS]

I suggest to create separate help versions for each software version and host them independently. As selector a page with a drop-down in a simple form is enough that gets submitted to a script file that then forwards the browser to the applicable URL. I bet that is also possible using JavaScript when tweaking this example: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8002 ... ook-iframe
Just plop the select input on a pretty page and adjust the OnChange event. All you need to do for any new version is generate the output, create the folder on the web server, publish to that folder, and finally pop in a new option in the selection page. Way easier than trying to make togglers within Flare to do this.
Alternatively, create a simple HTML page (could even use Flare for that) that contains a bunch of hyperlinks. Then that page will even work without JavaScript (but the WebHelp will fail).

[Thomas Tregner]

You may be able to accomplish what you want with a little scripting and rigorous application of conditions to meet the needs of the script.

These blog posts are a starting point for HTML5 output:
http://tregner.com/flare-blog/version-f ... l5-output/
http://tregner.com/flare-blog/version-f ... -toggling/

You would have to adapt those for WebHelp. If you want more complex behavior, such as to use multiple tags for an option, to show content without tags, or to apply advanced expressions, you would have to encode that logic in your script. I plan to post follow-ups to these on the blog. If you can put some use-cases in the comments, that may influence my follow-up posts.