HelpConsole 2008 Standard Edition 3

HelpConsole 2008 Standard Edition 3 is a software that provides you an easy way to create Help Systems and PDF manuals for your website or to distribute with your software products.

With this software, you can create a Help Center within your existing website that your staff can easily update at anytime from anywhere; publish online product manuals, product demos, FAQs, knowledgebase articles, PDF manuals, etc. The In-place editing feature allows your technical writers to quickly make changes to your online documentation after it has been published to your website.

Dynamic Web-based Help Authoring.  It's easy to think of help systems as being static. You create a user manual for your product and you're done. The reality is that once a product is released, the documentation constantly changes. A service pack may be released for your product, a new version of Windows comes onto the market, certain help topics become outdated, etc. HelpConsole makes it easy to design and maintain help systems right from your website.

Powerful and Easy to use. HelpConsole 2008 was designed with ease of use in mind. Anyone within your company will be able to quickly create professional web-based help systems and PDF manuals that run in all browsers on all platforms. The true WYSIWYG design environment allows you to see exactly how the resulting help system will appear.

In-place Editing. Once your dynamic help system is uploaded to your website, you can quickly make changes by clicking 'Login' and then entering your username and password.

HelpConsole's powerful visual design environment and extensive features make it easy to create and integrate professional help systems for your Windows application, Web application, or online services. Using the skin designer, template designer, styles, built-in controls, etc, you'll be able to customize any aspect of your help systems to meet your specific requirements and preference.

Major Features:

1. Easy to use
   • Intuitive User Interface. 'HelpConsole' was designed to be extremely easy to use. Any employee at any skill level can immediately use the software with no prior training.
   • Easy to Install. Simply install HelpConsole to a standard Web Server and provide the URL to your technical writers.
   • True WYSIWYG interface. What you see in edit mode is exactly what you see when the help system is published, with the exception of the design toolbar. 
   • Drag & Drop Page Management. Quickly add pages to the table of contents. Rename pages by simply clicking and typing. Drag and drop pages to build your contents structure.
   • Drag & Drop Page Elements. Change the position of text, images, flash animations, tables, etc. by simply dragging and dropping them.
   • Cut and paste from Word. Quickly cut and paste content from other applications such as Microsoft Word, or cut and paste content from any website
2. Product Functionality 
   • Text Search. Readers can search for pages within the Help System containing specific text.
   • Add to Favorites. Click 'Add to Favorites' to bookmark the current page so that you can quickly open it later in design mode.
     Index & Page Keywords. HelpConsole generates an index based on keywords specified for each page.
   • Fully compatible with .NET 2.0
   • HelpConsole supports both the .NET Framework 1.1 and 2.0.
   • Table of Contents. Create a table of contents with an unlimited number of folders and pages.
   • Customizable Skins. Use the 'skin editor' to customize the look and feel of your Help System.
3. Publish Help System
   • Publish a pure HTML version of your Help System which can be distributed with your software application, hosted on your website, etc..
   • PDF Manuals. Publish a PDF manual from your HelpConsole project. Easily customize the PDF template to suit your requirements.
   • All browsers Supported. The Help System detects if the user is running an older browser and automatically displays a legacy version of the Help System.
   • Context Sensitive Help. Create links from your web application to display specific pages within the Help System, and optionally display anchors within the page.
   • Conditional Content. Control which pages are displayed based on the specified skin. This is useful if you have multiple versions of a product where the featureset is slightly different.
     XHTML 1.1 Compliant Output. The HTML content created by the page editor is XHTML compliant.
   • Webpage style Help. Create a help system where the skin, table of contents and page content are merged for each page that is generated. No frames or iframes are used.
   • Section 508 Compliance. The page content will be "Section 508" accessible if the author fills in  fields marked with a special accessibility icon. In the case of a table, the Windows Narrator tool uses this information to produce a tooltip message for each table cell. Users with impaired vision can hear those Tooltips as they hover over the cells with the mouse.
4. Design Environment 
   • Cascading Style Sheet. Easily apply styles to page content such as text, images, tables, etc. Select from a list of predefined styles or define your own.
   • Text Variable. Use text variables to insert text such as 'company name' or 'product version' that may change in the future.
   • HTML Variable. Use HTML variables to insert graphical elements such as your company logo that may change in the future.
   • Spellchec. Use this feature to check the spelling of each page within your Help System.
   • Author Sticky Note. Add sticky notes to pages in edit mode to remind your self to complete certain tasks later. This can also be used by a manager to provide feedback to the author.
   • Complex table creation. Use the Table wizard to create complex tables with any number of columns and rows. Set the background color, background image, style, border, etc.
   • Screenshots & Images. Use the 'Image Manager' to insert screenshots and other graphics into your Help System. Create and insert smaller thumbnails from existing images. Easily upload images to your webserver from your computer or network.
   • Page links, Internet links. Insert links to other pages within your Help System, or links to external pages or documents on the internet.
   • Hotspot Editor. Use the hotspot editor to create clickable areas within an image that can be linked to various other pages.
5. Dynamic Content 
   • Flash Animations & Movies. Easily add flash or media animations to your help system to demonstrate product functionality.
   • Dynamic Image & Text Effects. Apply styles or add DHTML to HTML elements to create mouseover effects, or other dynamic effects.
   • Include external HTML pages. Add external pages to your help system, such as a page on your website. This external page will also be included when the PDF Manual is generated.
   • Embedded Topic Pages. You can create reusable content by embedding one page inside another page using a HTML tag

Enhancements:

1. Improved Interface. The HelpConsole 2008 design interface is easier to use and more streamlined.
2. Security Groups. HelpConsole 2008 now supports security groups. This makes it easier when creating usernames, and makes it easier to assign permissions to multiple usernames in the same group in the future.
3. Reader comments and feedback. Readers can now rate help pages based on whether they found them useful or not. Readers can also submit comments based on the page content. These comments can be displayed to the public immediately or first approved by an administrator. 
4. Concurrent Author Support. This feature allows multiple authors to work on the same help project at the same time. If a page is locked when an author tries to edit it, a message appears stating that the page is locked, when it was locked, and who locked it.  
5. Help Project Merging. This feature allows two or more help systems to be merged together when viewed in live mode, or when published to a static help system. This is useful if there are two authors that are responsible for separate sections of an online help manual. The authors can work on the projects separately and then merge them together at a later time.
6. Flat Page Format. Help systems can now be displayed in either a ‘frames’ format or a ‘flat’ format. The ‘frames’ format displays page content within a frame and the contents and skin are not reloaded. The ‘flat’ format displays the page content, contents and skin all within the same HTML page. This new format is more search engine friendly and always displays the page URL in the browser address line.
7. Redesigned From Scratch. HelpConsole 2008 was designed from the ground up using the latest technology such as Visual Studio 2005, AJAX 
8. Pages Now Stored in Database. In HelpConsole 2007, pages were stored as .aspx files. In HelpConsole 2008, pages are stored as records in a database. This provides several benefits such as: Pages load faster; Faster search; Fewer files. Takes up less disk space. Faster to copy project folders and files. 
9. Page Link Dialog. The new ‘page link’ dialog makes it easier to insert links to other help pages. The ‘Document Manager’ function is no longer used for this.
10. Page Status and Approval. Authors can assign a status to each help page. Each status will have an associated color. Green might represent ‘needs review’, ‘yellow’ might represent ‘incomplete’, etc.
11. Reports. New reports are included such as: Pending Pages; Pending Comments
12. Global Search and Replace. Authors can now search and replace text or html code across all pages in the help project
13. Page Templates. Authors can now design their own page templates using the ‘template editor’ or modify existing templates.
14. Stylesheet editing. Authors can now edit the default page stylesheet directly from the HelpConsole interface. 

Requirements:

1. Web Server:
   
   • Net Framework 2.0 or higher
   • Windows XP Professional / Windows 2003 / Windows 2008 / Windows Vista
   • IIS 5.0 or 6.0
   • 256 megs RAM
2. Harddrive Space: 500 megs
3. Client PC (Edit Mode):IE 6.0+, Firefox 2.0+
4. Client PC (Live Mode): All browsers supported
   

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