Adobe AIR Help in RoboHelp 8

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Select one of the four options.

Where you will generate the AIR file.

If you are generating both forms of AIR help, you might find it easier if you create a folder under the SSL folder in Windows Explorer first. In the layout select that folder for both. RoboHelp will create separate folders within your chosen folder.

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 replaced by the new version.

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.

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.

If it helps, this is how I got it working using a Verisign certificate.

1. Get the .PVK and .SPC files, probably from your developers, and put them in a folder.
2. Get the pvk2pfx.exe file from Microsoft and put that in the same folder. See the instructions and link on Verisign's site. Click here.
3. Either follow those instructions or save the file to the same location as the .PVK and .SPC files and run a batch file, again from the same folder. The contents of the batch file will be as below. Just change the words in blue to your file names and password.
   
   pvk2pfx -pvk myprivatekey.pvk -spc mycredentials.spc -pfx mypfxfile.pfx /po mypassword
4. A PFX file will be created in the same folder. This file is not yet ready to use.
5. Double click the PFX file to start the import wizard.
6. In the second page, make sure you tick the Mark this key as exportable option.
   
   
7. In the next page, I used the automatic option.
8. Continue and you should get an Import Successful message.
9. Open Internet Explorer and go to Tools > Internet Options > Content > Certificates.
10. Select the certificate you just imported and select Export. (Yes you read that correctly!)
11. Follow the wizard making sure you select Yes, Export the Private Key.
12. In the next page select the Personal Information Exchange option and make sure you tick Include all certificates and Delete the private key.
    
    
13. Continue through the wizard until prompted to save the PFX file being created. Either overwrite the one created earlier or save the file to a new location.
14. Browse to the new file from the AIR wizard.
    

By default, the help will be installed in Program Files in a sub-folder with the name of the help file.

If you want to specify a higher level folder within Program Files to which the help will be installed, enter the name of the sub-folder here.

For example, you might want all your company's help files to be entered in a folder named Company A. If you enter Company A here and the help file is My Help, the help will be installed in Program Files/Company A/My Help

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Click Select to access the Branding Options screen.

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

Only PNG images are permitted.

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These settings are the same as for any other online help output. Select as required.

"Show context in Search Results" is not available in all the templates.

Comments can be made by end users and by reviewers. See the Comments section in Adobe AIR Help.

Tick to enable comments for either users or reviewers.

To enable reviewers to share comments, enter a network folder using the server name, not the mapping letter, otherwise leave the path blank.

The Browse button does not see mapped network drives as other users might not have the same mapping. However, you can type in the path using the server name and that will work.

Having to enter a server name creates a problem if you want end users to share comments. Typically you would only want users within one company to see comments made by users in that company. You could enter a server name and path that would work for those users but it would not work for the users in another company, their server would have a different name and likely a different path. If you have a lot of companies using your product, producing a separate AIR file for each of them is not a viable solution. Fortunately one of my developer colleagues, Mike Hempenstall, has come up with a workable solution. Click here to view the instructions.

Tick this box if you want auto-updating to be enabled.

You can specify a network location or a web location for the XML and AIR files that will be created when you generate an output with this option ticked.

With this option enabled, when you update the help you increment the version number in General Settings but you do not update the Help ID. When the user opens the help it will look in the specified location and if it finds a higher version for the same ID, the user will be prompted to install the update.

Consider who you want to get the update.
If your product is at Version 1 and the help is about some updates that Version 1 users are entitled to get free, you will likely want them to have the revised help. In that scenario, change just the help version.
If you new help is for Version 2, you would not want Version 1 customers to install the new help. In this scenario, change the Help ID and start the numbering again. That will not remove the earlier version, your developers will need to ensure the program upgrade not only uninstalls the old version of the program, they must uninstall the old help as part of that routine.

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

If you want users to use online content when a connection is available and local content at other times, tick this option and enter the URL for the online content.

This does mean that if users need to access online content at different locations because it has to be behind a firewall, you need to generate an AIR file for each location that has to be specified.

### Link to Tulika's blog.

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Description

(Optional) ID of help content to be viewed in Viewer. It is specified in .helpcfg file. (taken from Adobe help contents)