Publishing > Configuring Your Output

The appearance and functionality of WebHelp output is controlled by the options in two sections in your Project Configuration:

•Configuration > Publishing Options > WebHelp

•Configuration > HTML Page Templates

Additional WebHelp and HTML information for experts

If you are experienced in creating pages with HTML, CSS and JavaScript please refer to the Using HTML Templates chapter for information on how you can get the most out of your HTML-based output in Help & Manual.

It is unavoidable that your WebHelp output will look slightly different depending on the browser used to view it. HTML Help and Visual Studio Help are proprietary Microsoft formats that use Microsoft help viewers to display them, and your output in these formats will always closely resemble your source in the Help & Manual editor.

This is not possible in WebHelp. The HTML code generated is the best possible compromise between the many quirks of all the browsers now in use and compliance with the W3C specifications for XHTML, HTML and CSS.

Unfortunately, no browser is really compliant with all the standards. In addition to this, individual browsers often interpret the same rules and formatting tags differently.

The most important sections are Layout, Navigation and HTML Export Options. Always at least check the settings in these sections before publishing a new project.

The options in this section control the layout of your WebHelp.

Integrated:
This uses the latest HTML5-based templates. The flexible layout uses modern iFrames instead of the old, deprecated frameset. Recommended for most projects. As in the classic 3-frame layout (see below), you can use the header frame as container for the header of your website or any other web content.

No Frames:
This option is only for users who want to manage all their help topic files themselves. It does not create an integrated help system. The TOC file is used as the main index.html file and topics selected in the TOC display in the same page as the TOC.

Classic 2 Frames:
This generates the old frameset-based 2-frame layout used in previous versions of Help & Manual. It is provided mainly for users who want to continue using their own old customized templates.

Classic 3 Frames:
This generates the old frameset-based 3-frame layout used in previous versions of Help & Manual. Here too, it is provided mainly for users who want to continue using their own old customized templates. The top frame can be used as a container for the header of your website or any other web page.

The options in this section control how Help & Manual generates the navigation for your WebHelp. Most of the options should be self-explanatory. For full details see Navigation in the Project Configuration chapter.

If you want a Keyword Index and Full-text Search tabs in your WebHelp you must activate these features here!

You can automatically generate an XML sitemap file that will be read by search engines to improve search engine performance when scanning your WebHelp.

These sections configure the Contents, Index and Search tabs of your WebHelp output. In addition to this you can also edit the HTML templates that are used for generating these tabs. Editing HTML templates directly requires experience with editing HTML code. If you are just getting started with Help & Manual it is recommended that you only use the default settings in the Simple Template Layout tab.

Note that the Full-text Search feature for WebHelp is only available in the Professional and Server versions of Help & Manual, which include a royalty-free license for the integrated Zoom web search engine from Wrensoft.

For full details on all the settings in these sections see WebHelp in the Publishing Options chapter. For full details on using and editing HTML templates see Using HTML Templates and Templates and Secondary Windows. See Publishing for an important note on publishing WebHelp with full-text search.

This section contains some of the most important options for your WebHelp output. They control how your project is converted to HTML code and how popup topics are managed and you should always check them before publishing a new project for the first time. Changes made here can cause radical differences in the behavior and appearance of your HTML Help output.

For full details on all the settings in this section see HTML Export Options in the HTML Help section of the Project Configuration chapter.

This is a shared section! The options in HTML Export Options are used for all HTML-based output formats (HTML Help, WebHelp, Windows Exe and ePub eBooks and Visual Studio Help). The settings of these options are the same for all these formats. You cannot enter different settings for the individual output formats.

This section activates Google Analytics for your WebHelp system.

For full details on Google Analytics see the overview page and the step by step instructions page.

This section provides access to the HTML templates used in all HTML-based output formats except iBooks®/ePub (which use special pre-coded templates). These templates define the layout of the HTML pages into which the text from your topics is inserted.

Editing HTML templates directly requires experience with editing HTML code. If you are just getting started with Help & Manual it is recommended that you only use the Simple Template Layout tab. This allows you to use the default template while you are getting used to using the program.

For full details on all the settings in this section see Topic Pages in the HTML Help section of the Project Configuration chapter.

For information on using and editing HTML templates see the Templates and Secondary Windows and Using HTML Templates chapters in the Reference section.