9+2 Often-Overlooked Features In Flare s Target Editor

Transcription

1 9+2 Often-Overlooked Features In Flare s Target Editor

2 Who Am I? Neil Perlin - Hyper/Word Services. Internationally recognized content consultant. Help clients create effective, efficient, flexible content in anything from hard-copy to mobile. STC s lead W3C rep Certified Flare, Mimic, Viziapps, others.

3 What We ll Look At Variables Override Glossary Glossary Term Conversion Advanced Mark of the Web Advanced DOC- TYPE Declaration Advanced Web- Safe Images Advanced Generate All Skins Advanced Exclude Content Advanced Master Page Advanced Medium Advanced SEO General A Bonus

4 Target Editor Variables Tab

5 Override Variables let us handle text that can change over time or in different outputs. Like a changing product name or client name. For example

6 Override This variable setting: Produces this in the output:

7 Override Changing the variable value changes it everywhere. But what if you want the same value in all projects except one? Override it here

8 Override And it changes in the output, here: But not back in the project itself, here:

9 Target Editor Glossary Tab

10 Glossary Term Conversion Automatically convert glossary tab terms that appear in a topic to glossary popups. This page has four mentions of Laphroaig, one a glossary term popup link, the others just text.

11 Glossary Term Conversion Convert Only Marked Terms produces Do Not Convert Terms produces...

12 Glossary Term Conversion Convert First Occurrence produces And Convert All Occurrences produces...

13 Target Editor Advanced Tab

14 Mark of the Web This is annoying. Occurs when you open a local HTML page under IE. Insert Mark of the Web (MOTW) is sort of a solution. Disables the Blocked Content warning; HTML page opens immediately.

15 Mark of the Web So why not use MOTW? Blocked content bar only appears if running HTML files locally in IE.» Don t use IE? Files on a server or network drive? Don t need MOTW. MOTW side effects.» Disables topic and external links in topic preview.» Disables external links in the output! Suggestion Enable MOTW during dev if you don t need to test links, disable for final output.

16 DOCTYPE Declaration Adds a DOCTYPE statement to topic files to render in strict or standards mode. No DOCTYPE topics render in quirks mode.

17 DOCTYPE Declaration Strategic decision Strict tells browser to enforce newer, stricter rules for displaying HTML files. Quirks tells browser to use older, looser rules for displaying HTML files. How to decide?» Do your topics use display features like floats that don t display correctly in normal mode? Use strict mode e.g. enable DOCTYPE.» Not having these problems? Use quirks mode e.g. ignore DOCTYPE maybe...

18 DOCTYPE Declaration What s the effect? Quirks lets modern browsers violate current syntax rules to run older HTML files correctly but cause trouble going forward. Strict enforces modern syntax rules.» Which may break the display of older HTML files. Effects vary depending on browser, version. See and talk to your programmers.

19 DOCTYPE Declaration A strategic opinion You willfully want Quirks No doctype. Please don t do this. Willfully designing for the Quirks mode will haunt you, your coworkers or your successors in the future when no one even cares about IE 6 anymore (already no one cares about Netscape 4.x and IE 5). Designing for the Quirks mode is a bad idea. Trust me. From

20 Web-Safe Images Auto-converts graphics in other than GIF, JPG, or PNG to one of those formats. Like a web-appropriate image generator. The converted file is in the output folder, not the main project folder.

21 Web-Safe Images Before generating the output.

22 Web-Safe Images After generating the output.

23 Generate All Skins Does what it says. Use to generate all skins defined in project if creating a project with CSH and non- CSH topics that use different skins. That you can call in the Alias Editor

24 Generate All Skins No CSH topics or just using one skin in the project? Can leave option selected or deselect it. In either case, Flare generates all skins selected for the project the one in the Skin field on the General tab. Suggestion Leave this feature selected and ignore it.

25 Exclude Content An alternative to using conditional build tags to exclude topics from the output. Will exclude topics that are not linked to: From the TOC, index, or other control file. From other topics that are linked from the TOC, index, or other control file. IOW, a way to automatically exclude unused topics from the output.

26 Exclude Content Can be confusing, esp. if used in a project that also uses conditional build tags. If a topic does not appear in the output, can be hard to figure out whether that s due to: The topic s not being linked at all. The topic s being excluded by a condition. Suggestion Use this feature carefully, and not at all if using build tags.

27 Master Page Where you specify the super template to apply to every topic in an online target. For example, without a master page:

28 Master Page But with a master page:

29 Master Page A fairly complex example:

30 Master Page Note Officially, can only have one master page per project. In fact, you can have more than one. See MadCap s public-facing knowledge base at 1F_-_Using_Multiple_Master_Pages_in_your_Project.htm

31 Medium Where you specify the CSS medium to use for a particular output. Medium alternate style properties for a particular output in one CSS. Like using Arial 16 blue for H1 in WebHelp. But Arial 16 black for H1 in PDF output. And Arial 12 red for H1 in mobile output. All from one CSS.

32 Medium Example

33 SEO To generate a sitemap and specify its location URL. Helps web crawlers find and index your browser-based outputs on the web. Strategic issue. Depends on whether you want your help to be public-facing and to reclaim the expert space on search engines. Need a sense of your company s strategic direction for this one.

34 And One General Tab Bonus An unfortunate field name This refers to the page layout, not the master page.

35 Hyper/Word Services Offers Training Consulting Development Flare Flare Mobile Viziapps XML Single sourcing Structured authoring

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37 Thank you... Questions? Hyper/Word Services