Adobe AIR Help in RoboHelp 7

What's covered?

AIR help is a new form of help from Adobe using .AIR technology.

• Adobe AIR Help describes what AIR help provides from a user perspective.
• This article describes the generation and setup of AIR help in its various forms for users of RoboHelp 7.
• Adobe AIR Help in RoboHelp 8 describes the generation and setup of AIR help in its various forms for users of RoboHelp 8.
• AIR Help Templates and Skins describes the templates and skins available.

AIR help was first introduced into RoboHelp during the life of Adobe RoboHelp Version 7.

It takes the webhelp output from an Adobe RoboHelp 7 project and uses the AIR Help Packager to package it into a single file for distribution or create browser based AIR help. When the end user receives the .AIR file they just double-click it and it installs in the same way as an application. If they don't already have the runtime, it is a once only setup. (This can be done as part of your normal installation.)

So what are the benefits? The key ones are:

• The help program does not need anything other than the AIR runtime so there are no considerations about differences between the appearance in different browsers. The help will currently run on Windows or a Mac, and Linux is on the way. The AIR runtime is a one-off installation, like FlashPlayer.
• You only have to create the AIR file once for all platforms, not once for each platform.
• The help can be set up to phone home for updates.
• Topic related comments can be added by the user.

Please note the information here is what I found and it has not been tested exhaustively.

Help Title

What you want to appear on the title bar of the help and the name that will appear in Program Files. It must be unique to each project and not be a name that might be used by someone else, such as "Help". I suggest something like Company A Product X Help. While this is the name that will appear in Program Files, it is not what the Auto Update uses when looking for previous versions of the help. If your company name and product name change and you alter the Help Title to Company B Product Y Help, the old version will still get removed and be removed by the new version.

WebHelp Folder

The existing webhelp that is to be converted to Adobe AIR Help.

Output File

Where you will generate the AIR file.

Version and Help ID

Whatever you want but they combine to create a unique key for each version. Do not change the Help ID, just increment the version number each time you release a new build. The combination of those two fields is the key to the mechanism that tells the installed help that a later version is available.

Digital Certificate and Password

Adobe .AIR requires a digital certificate. Digital signing assures users that the help has not been maliciously altered and identifies your organisation as the publisher.

For internal use it does not matter whether or not it is a signed certificate and for testing it is easy to create a certificate using the screen opposite. Below is a simple diagram showing how digital signatures work.

You will probably want to use a signed certificate for your customers. You can purchase digital signatures from recognised authorities such as VeriSign or Thawte. Don't worry too much about this aspect. Normally your IT department will deal with it.

There is a PDF with more information on this on Verisign's site.

Width and Height

The default size of the window for the user.

Template

There are already a number of different templates that give the user different functionality. Try out the different templates.

Skin

Each template will have various skins available. These only affect appearance, not functionality.

Specify Options for branded experience

I haven't tested this area properly. I understand you can select different images for About, Shortcut, Title Bar and Task Bar and that operating system decides the location to display. I haven't had time to test what appears where and, obviously you need to have that information.

The Company Logo appears top right where Powered by RoboHelp used to appear.

Live Preview of Help Content

Click to see a preview without generating.

Mini Table of Contents / Show Levels

Shows the headings in the topic to the level selected and they act as bookmarks. When the user clicks one of the items in the Mini TOC, they go to that heading.

Mini TOC is a working title for this tab in the beta.

Enable Commenting

Tick to enable the user to record comments that can be uploaded to the drive specified so that they can be synchronised.

Enable Auto Update

I have not checked out the mechanics of this so please refer to Adobe's documentation.

Search Results along with the content

The search results will include the first few lines of the topics. This is not available in all the templates.

Add Resources

If you use the Multi Tab Accordion template, additional tabs can be added linking to other resources. The bars are added using the buttons below.

List of Resources

See above.

Copyright

Your copyright notice. Appears in Help | About.

Description

A description of the help. Appears in Help | About.

Program Menu Folder

If you want to specify a folder within Program Files to which the help will be installed, enter just the name of the sub-folder here. For example, enter Company A and the help will be installed to Program Files\Company A.

Context Sensitive Setttings

Calling the help from an application is awaiting the writing of the API. When that is available, any CSH calls will open the help using these settings. There will also be a requirement in some companies to use URLs in the same way as done with webhelp and I am hoping that too will be in the final release.

Show

Tick any of these options you require. (Always Override = Always on Top).