ClickHelp User Manual

Release Notes: July 2020 — Gecko

ClickHelp Gecko Update

ClickHelp Gecko brings in improvements in many product areas: more flexible permissions, better tables editing, new reader UI templates, better performance, and more!

New Features

    Topic Editor

    • The Quick Parts functionality has been implemented. Now, you can save your favorite content chunks as Quick Parts and easily insert them where needed. Create template elements like different information boxes, tables, or even whole topics.
    • Multiple topic templates. ClickHelp has a global Topic Template that is used when you create a new topic. Now you can define multiple topic templates as Quick Parts to insert them right after topic creation.
    • It is now possible to resize table columns visually in the topic editor.
    • It is now possible to add new table rows with keyboard shortcuts. This is useful when you need to add many rows at once.
    • It is now possible to navigate between table cells with the Tab/Shift+Tab shortcuts.
    • Table data copy-pasting has been improved. You can now insert table data into an existing table - the inserted cell values will be distributed into the target table cells. It is still possible to paste a table inside a table the way it worked previously with a new paste option: Nest Table.
    • The paste mode selection popup is now displayed near the text cursor, so it's now easier to notice it.
    • Inline conditional elements are now supported. It is now possible to add include/exclude conditions to any elements (specific words, links, list items, etc.). It is now also possible to remove conditions from selection or a conditional block with a single click.
    • When a conditional block is inserted into the editor and there is a selection in it, the selected content is no longer replaced with default text - it is moved into the newly created block instead.
    • It is now possible to extract the current selection in topic editor to a snippet and replace the selection with a snippet reference. The snippet can be created in the current project or in a different project.
    • Topic editor loading speed has been significantly improved.
    • The editor now remains in the editing mode when switching among topics. You no longer need to re-open the editor after switching to another topic in TOC. Also, the editor's current view (Design, Source, Preview) persists when switching among topics and going to/from the editing mode. So, if you prefer working with topic sources you no longer have to load the source mode editor every time when you switch between topics.
    • Loading speed was improved for links to projects and publications (affects all URLs like .../articles/project-id or .../articles/project-id/topic-id). The improvement affects links from the Home page (authors and readers), publication links on the Articles page when the Clear Sky template is used (readers only), project/publication links on Portal Dashboard (authors only) and project links in the Current Project menu (authors only).
    • A context popup suggesting to add a review comment is now displayed near topic editor selection allowing quick creation of review comments.
    • It is now possible to indent/outdent a list with the Tab/Shift+Tab shortcut.
    • Two new languages for Code Sample blocks were added: Bash (Unix Shell) and Code. The latter does not refer to a specific language, it can be used for any code samples that do not require syntax highlighting. The "Code" language is now the default option for code samples.
    • All code samples are now protected from Google Translate automatic translation (a special "notranslate" CSS class is automatically assigned to them).
    • Dropdown/popup hotspots now have a special CSS class (CHHotspot_expanded) applied to them when the associated dropdown/popup is shown.
    • Table rows in code samples now have special CSS classes applied, so you can now hide the code sample header completely in PDF outputs.

    Publishing

    • If a topic ID was changed in a project and the topic is published in the Partial update mode, the topic's ID is now updated in the publication (the scenario was not supported previously).
    • Support for cross-publication links was implemented. It is important for links among publications created from the same project. Such links are now converted to smart links automatically when publishing (were reported as warnings previously, since the target topic could not be published yet).

    User Management

    • It is now possible to assign per-project permissions for authors. You can select which Author will have access to which projects.
    • Reviewers can now access Restricted publications.
    • When a new Private/Restricted publication is created, its default permissions are now defined based on the Author/Reviewer permissions of the source project. Only the Power Readers having access to all Restricted publications are now allowed to access new Restricted publications by default.
    • When you disable a user account, all notifications are now automatically disabled for that account.

    Branding

    • New Reader UI templates were added: Deep Space, Mountain Mist, Milk Oolong.
    • A new Reader Menu setting was implemented: it is now possile to display reader menu popups on hover instead of on click.

    Accessibility

    • Improved keyboard navigation for TOC and the "Filter by" box on the Search page.

    Import

    • When importing HTML files in the "split by headings" mode, if an imported HTML file has no headings but has a title defined, the title is now used as the topic's title (the first paragraph text was used previously).

    Security

    • To follow Internet security best practices, ClickHelp now requires an SSL/TLS certificate when you assign a custom domain name to your portal. Without a security certificate, your communication is not encrypted and can be intercepted by third parties.

Fixed Issues

    Topic Editor

    • Editor now converts empty list items to regular paragraphs when pressing Enter twice in a list (was creating new empty list items previously).
    • Popup and dropdown elements in topics are now saved if you have their editor popup open and switch to the view mode or to another topic without closing the editor popup first.
    • Popup and dropdown elements now work correctly if the same popup/dropdown is added to the same topic multiple times via snippets.
    • Caret no longer jumps to an unexpected list item when pressing Enter inside an inline element (e.g. a span tag) located in a list item.
    • Column cell background color is no longer cleared when it is changed via the Table Cell Properties dialog.
    • When topic A uses topic B as a snippet and topic B uses topic C as a snippet 3 or more times, topic A is now rendered correctly and does not cause false positive warnings on circular snippet references when publishing (topic C was rendered just twice in this case previously).
    • The Markdown and JSP languages for Code Samples now work correctly (caused issues in the Code Sample editor previously).
    • Code samples containing the "$" character are now rendered correcty.

    Reader UI

    • Several iOS-specific content scrolling issues have been fixed.

    Publishing

    • Fixed the "Violation of UNIQUE KEY constraint...'" error that could occur when publishing in the Partial Update mode when dealing with folders or topics which had their ID changed in the project.
    • Broken image links could appear in a publication after updating it in the Replace mode when the publication used a Storage folder with a name different from its ID.

    Branding

    • Home page and portal UI style caching improved: you'll no longer need to clear the browser cache when switching Home page or portal UI templates.
    • When creating a new publication which uses a reader UI template different from the one used for the entire portal, the publication's reader UI is now rendered correctly.

    Import

    • HTML files are now imported correctly even if invalid encoding is specified in a file via the <meta> tag.
    • The "The process cannot access the file..." error no longer occurs when importing HTML files and splitting HTML files to topics by headers.
    • Importing multiple zipped HTML files in the "split by headings" mode now works correctly.
    • When importing a Word document with specific table formatting, the first column of a table no longer gets too wide unexpectedly.
    • Mac-specific entries in zipped HTML files (like the __MACOSX folder) no longer affect the import process, so no undesired topics and Storage files are now created when importing zipped HTML files from an archive created on a Mac computer.
    • Import from CHM no longer fails if there's an empty entry in the imported TOC.

    User Management

    • Unexpected user session expiration might happen when working with ClickHelp.

    TOC

    • Publishing mode indicators (never publish, conditional publishing) can now be hovered and display details (including specific tag names) as tooltips.

    Web Help

    • Resolved browser caching issues which could've caused previous TOC or Full-Text Search data to be used by a web browser after Web Help was updated to a new version.
    • Several accessibility issues were fixed.

    Export

    • An empty warning box could be displayed at the last step of the Export wizard for the CHM output.
    • The output file name could be wrong when opening the Export wizard for the second time in a row.