Web-based Help Publisher

Our cross-platform help system for web browsers. Built with 100% pure client-side JavaScript, CSS, and HTML, providing an ideal browser-based help solution for web sites, complete with TOC, alphabetical keyword index, and JavaScript-powered search engine.

The Web-based Help Publisher window allows you to customize the appearance of your help system interface by choosing background colors, icon colors, font face, font size, and more! HelpLogic includes a variety of icon colors to match whatever background colors you decide to use for your toolbar, tabs, and left frame. The handy diagram in the top right corner of the window gives you a display preview of your chosen colors and options.

If you choose to assign either an Image Logo or Text Title Logo, then that logo will appear in the top toolbar on the far right. The Margin setting affects the amount of spacing around the Logo or Text Title. If you need additional space for tall logos, you can also adjust the height of the top toolbar (the default is 30 pixels tall).

What gets published along with your help pages and Table of Contents is a professionally designed help system interface, providing a comprehensive, intuitive, user-friendly help experience. The toolbar includes optional navigational buttons (Back, Forward, Home, Print) and three selectable tabs: Contents, Index, and Search.

Those three tabs can be localized to the language of your choice. For your convenience, HelpLogic provides presets for several languages.

Your TOC chapters and pages are displayed in the Contents Tab. When Web-based Help is first displayed, the Contents tab is always the default selected tab, providing the Table of Contents to users as the initial entry point into your help system.

Your TOC keywords are displayed as an alphabetical index in the Index Tab. With each index listing linked to its assigned TOC topic, the Index allows users to quickly find and access information by browsing keywords and phrases.

The Search Tab hosts a built-in search engine that's powered by client-side JavaScript, so NO additional scripting or CGI is required. The search engine scans your TOC keywords to find related page matches.

If desired, you can opt to remove the navigation toolbar by selecting the "Remove Toolbar" checkbox, but please note that without the toolbar, users will NOT have access to the Index or Search features. Without the toolbar, only the Table of Contents will be available in the left frame for navigating through your help pages. If the entire toolbar is removed, but you've opted to use an Image or Text Logo, then that logo will appear in the Contents frame on the left. If you only want to remove the navigation buttons and keep the three tabs, then only select the "Remove Toolbar Buttons" checkbox.

By default, the main start page for your published help system is named "index.html". If your web site already has an "index.html" file in the same directory where you want to place your help files, you can now select the new Use Alt. Main Filename checkbox to publish "indexhelp.html" as the main page filename of your help system.

If you need to design your help system to be compatible with older web browser versions that may not support CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), you have the option to set the TOC Compatibility to the older HTML 3.2 format. For the best visual results, the CSS/HTML option is highly recommended (especially since all modern web browsers support CSS). Please note that when publishing, the TOC Compatibility setting only affects the formatting of the TOC (Table of Contents) and not your own help pages from the Source Files folder.

If your HTML source files use the ISO-8859-1 charset text encoding, then use that same one for your TOC Char Set. If your HTML help pages use UTF-8, then assign the TOC Char Set to UTF-8 for consistency. The TOC charset is used in the Contents, Index, Search, and toolbar frames that HelpLogic dynamically generates during the publishing process. For example, if the Contents, Index, and Search tabs are localized to Japanese, then you would probably want to set the TOC Char Set to UTF-8 to ensure that those Japanese characters display properly in a web browser.

Web-based Help even supports context-sensitive help! After you have published your help system, you will find a "Context-Sensitive Help.txt" document in your help folder that lists all of the special index files for linking directly to specific help pages.

Important Note: When selecting a publish location, do NOT choose a directory within your source files folder. Publishing from your source files folder into your source files folder will cause an endless loop, filling your hard drive with endless folders. As of HelpLogic 1.0a2, the Publish feature does not allow you to select the source files folder as your publish location.

When HelpLogic is run in Trial demo mode, Web-based Help Table of Contents are limited to 3 topics per chapter. This publishing limitation is removed when you purchase a license and register the application with your serial number.