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Journals by EmailI had some time today for testing the RoboHelp Packager for Adobe AIR (isn’t saying “Adobe AIR” like saying “ATM machine” or “PIN number”?), so I went to town. I kept notes as I went. I would be flooding the Packager forum with threads after exercising the Packager, so I thought it would be better to not be the kind of guest who makes himself at home to the point of leaving his clothes and dirty dishes strewn all over the house. Instead, I’ll provide my critique here in my own space.
Please be aware that these are coming generally in the order that I made the notes, though there is some semblance of organization of related topics. And unless otherwise noted, I’m talking about the “Classic Help” layout, since that’s the one I tried first.
Window Sizing
I had some problems with the output’s “physical” flexibility. I first tried Classic Help at 800 x 700 pixels, and the maximize and close controls didn’t appear until I widened the window beyond a certain point. So there seemed to be a minimum width that the window would gracefully handle. There also seems to be a minimum height for the AIR help so that the bar at the bottom with the “About” and “Preferences” links is hidden if the help opens at certain dimensions, such as the 700px or less.
The topics themselves in the right pane appeared to have a minimum width, even though the help I was testing had no such parameter set in the CSS or HTML. This caused the help text to run off the right edge and disappear, making horizontal scrolling necessary. I expect that behavior only if I had images that extended past the edge of the topic pane, but I expect the text to wrap properly.
At first, I thought the only way to resize the AIR help window is at the bottom-right corner. Then I discovered that I could indeed resize in one direction by clicking on the 1px-wide border of the help window, but because the mouse pointer doesn’t change to a resize handle, I found this out by accident.
After experimentation, I concluded that you have to have at least a 900 x 800 size before all controls appear correctly in Classic Help. (In Uni-pane, it’s right around 670px.) I think the help window ought to gracefully accommodate smaller window sizes.
Favorites
It wasn’t immediately apparent that the little arrow icon between the TOC pane and the Favorites pane means you can hide the Favorites. In fact, the arrow points upward, and an arrow pointing downward makes more sense to me.
I would like a way to set the Favorites to be hidden by default rather than showing by default and having to be hidden. This is how Web browsers work, so it is likely what people are used to.
JavaScript
I have some JavaScript in the help system I was using to test this; the scripts cause some hidden divs to appear upon clicking links and then to disappear again on clicking somewhere else. This completely didn’t work in the AIR file, even though the JS file I use was included in the baggage files of my RoboHelp project. I would like to see JavaScript better handled. (Perhaps it would work if the JavaScript were included in the page, but the reason for a JS file is that if you have to change the script, you change it in one place, not in dozens of topics.)
Customizing Appearance
I didn’t see any options for customizing the look other than picking a few PNG images for icons. I expected some skins or color pickers based on the descriptions on Adobe’s site. Customization of the look is limited to being able to choose from two skins per layout (or no choice in the case of Classic Help) and to select graphics for only five buttons. I would love to have greater control over the appearance so that I can make the help resemble the application it goes with.
That’s all I have time for at the moment. Part 2 is coming soon.
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