HTML5 Cons

[jonathanlolley]

Hi there,

My company is about to retire support for IE7, so I'm moving towards switching from WebHelp to HTML5 output. I'm aware of the pros for HTML5, but has anyone come across any cons for switching? I have read reports that the search is not as strong (wild cards and partial word search aren't great), but I haven't been able to confirm that.

Thank you.

[Psider]

I would definitely say the search isn't as good in HTML5. Part of it is that the "context" that displays includes topic title, heading and some information we repeat at the top of most topics, so we rarely get useful information in the context. I suspect entering a summary for each topic may help, but we haven't had time to implement to see if that improves things.

Additionally, there is currently an incompatibility with jquery plugins. I'm not sure of the scope, but certainly the one I tried to implement does not work at all in HTML5 (MadCap have lodged a bug report about it). So if you have jquery plugins, you may not be able to upgrade.

[NorthEast]

I would definitely say the search isn't as good in HTML5. Part of it is that the "context" that displays includes topic title, heading and some information we repeat at the top of most topics, so we rarely get useful information in the context. I suspect entering a summary for each topic may help, but we haven't had time to implement to see if that improves things.

WebHelp has no context at all, so I don't see how having some context in HTML5 search results is a negative; but I agree the context could be a lot better, it only shows the first few lines of the topic, rather than where the search term appears in the topic (like Google would).

Additionally, there is currently an incompatibility with jquery plugins. I'm not sure of the scope, but certainly the one I tried to implement does not work at all in HTML5 (MadCap have lodged a bug report about it). So if you have jquery plugins, you may not be able to upgrade.

I've used several plugins without any issue (e.g. bootstrap, SmartMenus), I think the Datatables plugin you're talking about has issues with RequireJS used by HTML5 Help.
See: http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... 00#p101300

[Spectre]

Hi,

On the subject of HTML5 search, I'm finding that the search results aren't ranked as I would have hoped. If I search for "advanced options" - without the quotes - a topic with only "advanced" in it appears before topics with advanced + options. I can see from a couple of other threads that the search in HTML5 has limitations. Can anyone offer any advice on settings within Flare that I might not be using, or external add-ins? Is Flare 10 supposed to be any better - I'm on 9.1.2?

Many thanks.

[Jessie2013]

Having the exact same problem as Spectre. Makes the search functionality pretty useless. Anyone found a way to tweak the ranking?

[Spectre]

Having the exact same problem as Spectre. Makes the search functionality pretty useless. Anyone found a way to tweak the ranking?

Hi Jessie,

It's a while since I looked at this, so I can't remember whether the following solved all my queries about search, but I'm pretty sure it helped. I contacted MadCap support, and they sent me the following response:

"Search results for HTML5 are based on a weighting system. The weighting takes into account things such as the term in: Headings, index keywords, the amount of times it occurs in the topic. This may explain why the result is displaying as the content in the topic is weighted for it to appear there.

Here is specific information regarding how the search results are determined in HTML5 output:

Ranking Search Results
http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare ... esults.htm

Cheers.

[Jessie2013]

Thanks so much for the reply.

The issue seems pretty obvious now. The "overview" content that I would expect as the first result contains a diagram and relatively little text. As a result, other topics are ranked above it as they contain more text and more instances of the search term I wonder for this one instance can I hide the search term several times somewhere in the overview so that its ranking is manually boosted.

[Spectre]

Thanks so much for the reply.

The issue seems pretty obvious now. The "overview" content that I would expect as the first result contains a diagram and relatively little text. As a result, other topics are ranked above it as they contain more text and more instances of the search term I wonder for this one instance can I hide the search term several times somewhere in the overview so that its ranking is manually boosted.

I'm not aware that you can manually boost a topic, but others will be able to confirm. My help project isn't live yet, but I fully intend to include something to explain the Search, and its foibles. Beyond that, it's rather dropped as a priority for me. I think it's okay, as a user experience, though probably not ideal.

[wclass]

You could put meaningful words into the description.
- select the topic
- open the Properties for the topic and choose the "Topic Properties" tab.
- add content to the Description field.

Anything added here ends up as a meta tag in the output with the form:
<meta name="description" content="whatever" />

The description is also used as the context that is displayed in the search results. This is very handy for topics with mostly graphics.

My understanding of the search weightings is:
- Title
- H1 tags
- File names (but use underscores in the file name to separate words)
- Index key words
- Description
- Other headings H2 to H6
- content body (including how close together the terms are)

[Spectre]

Just a further word on this...

I queried with MadCap why topics with the search terms in the title were appearing after topics with search terms in the content body (in my project), and the Support technician has submitted a feature request "regarding the ability to configure search algorithm or to configure ranking".

Regards.

[Sharpras]

So what is the upshot now? Can any wild characters be used in the Search field of HTML5 Help?