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Generate Frameless output

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  1. RoboHelp User Guide
  2. Introduction
    1. Get to know RoboHelp workspace
    2. What's new in RoboHelp 2022 release
      1. What's new in Update 5
      2. What's new in Update 4
      3. What's new in Update 3
      4. What's new in Update 2
      5. What's new in Update 1
    3. Fixed Issues in RoboHelp
    4. RoboHelp System Requirements
    5. Download RoboHelp on Windows and macOS
    6. Download and install Adobe app
    7. RoboHelp FAQs
    8. What's new in RoboHelp 2020 release
      1. What's new in Update 8
      2. What's new in Update 7
      3. What's new in Update 6
      4. What's new in Update 5
      5. What's new in Update 4
      6. What's new in Update 3
      7. What's new in Update 2
      8. What's new in Update 1
  3. Projects
    1. Plan your RoboHelp project
    2. Create a project
    3. Manage projects
    4. Work with topics and folders
    5. Generate reports
    6. Work with context-sensitive help
    7. Manage References
    8. Set preferences in RoboHelp
  4. Collaborate with authors
    1. Collaborate using Git
    2. Collaborate using SharePoint Online
    3. Collaborate using Azure DevOps (Team Foundation Server)
  5. PDF Layout
    1. PDF templates
    2. Design a page layout
    3. Publish PDF output
    4. Work with the common content styles
    5. Components of a PDF template
    6. Support for language variables
    7. Customize PDFs
  6. Editing and formatting
    1. Format your content
    2. Create and manage cross-references
    3. Create and manage links
    4. Single-source with snippets
    5. Work with images and multimedia
    6. Create and use variables for easy updates
    7. Work with Variable Sets
    8. Use Find and Replace
    9. Auto save your content
    10. Side-by-side editing in Split View
    11. Use the Spell Check feature
    12. Create and Edit Bookmarks
    13. Insert and update fields
    14. Switch between multiple views
    15. Autonumbering in CSS
  7. Import and linking
    1. Import Markdown files into a project
    2. Import Word documents into a project
    3. Import FrameMaker documents into a project
  8. TOCs, indexes, glossaries, and citations
    1. Create and manage a Table of Contents
    2. Create and manage an index
    3. Create and manage a glossary
    4. Create and manage citations
    5. Create and manage browse sequences
    6. Work with See Also and Related Topics
  9. Conditional content
    1. What is conditional content
    2. Create and apply condition tags
    3. Configure output presets for conditional content
    4. Optimize and manage conditional content
  10. Microcontent
    1. Microcontent
  11. Review and Collaboration
    1. Review and Collaboration
  12. Translation
    1. Translating content to multiple languages
    2. Configure a translation framework for a service provider
  13. Generating output
    1. Generate output
    2. Generate Frameless output
    3. Generate Knowledge Base output
    4. Generate PDF output
    5. Generate Responsive HTML5 output
    6. Generate Word Document output
    7. Generate Content Only output
    8. Generate eBook output
    9. Generate Microsoft HTML Help output
    10. Generate Mobile App output
  14. Publish output
    1. Publish to a RoboHelp Server
    2. Publish to an FTP server, a Secure FTP server, or a File System
    3. Publish to SharePoint Online
    4. Publish to Zendesk Help Center
    5. Publish to Salesforce Knowledge Base
    6. Publish to ServiceNow Knowledge Base
    7. Publish to Zoho Knowledge Base
    8. Publish to Adobe Experience Manager
    9. Publish to Atlassian Confluence Knowledge Base
  15. Appendix
    1. Adobe RoboHelp Scripting Reference
    2. RoboHelp keyboard shortcuts

Learn how to generate Frameless output in RoboHelp so that your content can be viewed online and from desktop applications.

What is Frameless output

Frameless output can be viewed on the web or using a desktop application. This output type works with any browser and platform and provides several customization capabilities.

Configure a Frameless output preset

The first step in generating the output of a RoboHelp project is to create an output preset and then configure the various settings of the output preset. You can use the following settings to configure a Frameless output preset:

General

Use the following options to specify basic output settings, such as title, output path, language of UI strings, and more:

Title Specify the title for the generated output.

You can use variables in the title. To do so, type Ctrl + 1 and select a variable from the drop-down list, and then press Enter. Note that if you have provided a variable set in the Content tab > Variable Set field, during output generation, the value of the selected variable is picked from the variable set.

The title, along with the variables if used, appears on the browser tab of the output.

Favicon Specify an icon to associate with the output. This icon appears on the browser tab of the output. Click  to browse and select a desired icon.

Output Path Specify a location for the output. To select a location, click  . 

Ensure that the output path is NOT located inside the project folder. If the output path is inside the project folder, the output generation fails. Also the folder you select should NOT have any content that you need. RoboHelp deletes the contents of the folder before generating the output.

Save output path as relative to project: If enabled and you browse to the output path., the path to the output will now be a relative instead of absolute.

Start Page Specify the page name and extension (.htm or .html) that RoboHelp can use to generate the URL for the output. For example, specify index.html.

Language Use the drop-down list to specify a language for the output preset if the language of the UI of the generated output needs to be different from the language of the content specified in project settings. 

Encoding Use the drop-down list to specify the type of character encoding format to be used for your content.

Use lowercase file names Select to generate all output files with lowercase filenames.

Post Generation Script To run your custom script after output generation, select the script .js file from the drop-down list.

Content

Use the following options to specify content-related output settings, such as the settings for Table of Contents, index, glossary, and condition expression:

Table Of Contents Use the drop-down list to select a Table of Contents to be included in the output. This drop-down list displays the Tables of Contents available in your project. The first Table of Contents in this drop-down list is selected by default.

The set of files and their references present in the selected Table of Contents appear in the generated output.

Browse Sequence Use the drop-down list to view the defined browse sequences in your project. You can select more than one browse sequence. The selected browse sequences are then merged for the output. If there is a conflict with the selected browse sequences, the first selection is given preference.

Default Topic Click  to select the topic that displays in the Topic panel when you open the output. By default, the first topic in the Table of Contents selected for this output is the default topic.

You can also select the default topic from the merged child projects. The list shown under the merged child projects is read from the selected TOC.

Include Index Select this setting to include the index page in the output.

Glossary  Use the drop-down list to select the glossary to be included in the output. The glossary helps your users to quickly retrieve the  relevant terms in your project, with the corresponding definitions.

Condition Expression Use the drop-down list to specify the condition expression for your output. This setting allows you to easily include or exclude content depending on the desired type of output or userbase. Click  to edit the selected condition expression. You can also select None in the drop-down list to not specify any condition expression.

Dynamic Content Filter Use the drop-down list to select a dynamic content filter so your end users can filter content in the generated output. Click  to edit the selected Dynamic Content Filter. Alternatively, select None in the drop-down list to not specify a dynamic content filter.

Variable Set Use the drop-down list to specify the variable set to use in this output. In the drop-down list, you can select <Default Variable Set> to use the project's default variable set. Variable sets allow you to implement output-specific use of variables. For example, you can have different variable sets for generating output for customers and internal users.

Map Files Use the drop-down to select a map file to use context-sensitive help. For more help, see Work with context-sensitive help.

Layout

Use the following options to configure the appearance of your output:

You can create a custom home page or topic page footer and apply it to the topics of your choice. The footer may contain any dynamic elements (snippets, variables, conditional tags, etc.) a topic may contain.

Home Page Footer Content  Click  to browse and select a topic (.htm) that you want to show as a footer on the home page. For example, specify README.htm.

Topic Page Footer Content  Click  to browse and select a topic (.htm) that you want to show as a footer on the topic page. For example, specify README.htm.

PDF to Download Click  to browse and select the PDF that you want the users to download when they click on the Download PDF button in the output.

Use skin home page Select this field to show the home page in your output.

Skin Home Page Content Click  to browse the topic that you want to show on the home page along with the Table of Contents tiles.

Use the following options to specify search-related settings for your output:

Search Context. You can specify the Search Context to customize the search topic results based on your requirements. The three available options for Search Context are: 

  • Text around the search term: Selecting this option displays the text around the first occurence of the search term. 
  • Topic description: Choose this option to display the topic description as the context. It displays the description that you add under General>Description in the topic properties.
  • Starting text of the topic: Choose this option to display the opening content of the topic.

Set search context character limit. You can add a value here to set a limit to the number of characters that get displayed in the search topic results.

Enable a uto complete in  search box. Select this option to display predictive options for the search query based on the initial characters typed by users.  

Auto correct  search query. Select this option to correct misspelled terms that are typed during search. This setting corrects up to one character in each word typed during search. This ensures that you receive relevant search results, even if you enter a misspelled term.

Show definitions from glossary. Select this option to display definitions of search terms from the  glossary selected for this output. If the search term matches a glossary term, the definition of the term is  displayed.

Generate XML sitemap. Select this setting to generate a sitemap for your published output. The sitemap.xml file in the published output contains the sitemap. You can then submit this file to your search engine to improve search results for your site. To submit the sitmap.xml file, follow the procedure described in your search engine’s documentation. In Base URL of the hosted content, enter the relative URL of the site. In Frequency of content change, specify a cadence for indexing the content.

Select file types to exclude from search. You can exclude specific types of files, such as PDF, Word, and Excel, from search. The content from the selected files will not be included during search.

Note:

For compressed files to be used in search and otherwise, compression must be enabled on the server side.

At present, all CSS and JavaScript files that are larger than 1KB are compressed in gzip format and are included with the original file in the output folder. The files are then called by the server whenever the server requests the compressed files.

Publish

You can publish your output to SharePoint Online and FTP, SFTP, or File System. To be able to publish your output, first configure a publish profile for the appropriate server type. For more information, see the following sections:

After you save the publish profile, RoboHelp displays the profile in the Publish tab. To publish your output, select the appropriate publish profiles and click .

By default, only modified files are published using the chosen publish profiles since the last publish.

To publish all files, select Republish All and click . To view the publish log, in the Output Presets panel, against the appropriate output preset, choose  > View Publish Log.

Generate Frameless output

  1. In the authoring window of your project, click the Quick Generate icon  in the upper-right corner of the standard toolbar. Alternatively, select Quick Generate from the Output menu.

  2. Select a Frameless output preset in the Quick Generate dialog box.

  3. To configure the settings, do one of the following:

    • Click the Edit Settings icon  in the Quick Generate dialog box.
    • Click the Output tab at the left side of the Standard toolbar.

    The Output view opens.

  4. In the Output toolbar, click Output Presets. In the Output Presets panel, do one of the following:

    • Double-click the desired Frameless output preset.
    • Click the  icon next to the desired output preset and select Edit.

  5. See Configure a Frameless output preset to configure the output settings.

  6. To save your settings, click the Save icon  in the upper-left corner of the standard toolbar in the Output view.

  7. Click the Generate Preset icon  in the Output Presets panel.

    You can then view a progress bar next to the selected output preset in the Output Presets panel. Once the output generation is complete, a Success dialog box is visible at the bottom-right corner of the screen.

    After the output generation is complete, click  in the Output Presets panel to view the output.

    Note:

    Alternatively, you can generate the output in the authoring window. Click Quick Generate  on the toolbar, select the desired output preset, and click Generate. 

    You can then view a progress bar in the Quick Generate dialog box. After the output generation is complete, click  next to the output preset to view the output. In case the output generation failed, click  next to the selected output preset to view the error log.

  8. To view the output in a selected browser, select View With and choose one of the browsers installed on your computer. The currently available browsers are listed in alphabetical order, for example, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox. You can preview your output with any of the browsers installed on your computer. This View With option is also available in topic Preview mode in authoring.

    Users would also be able to download and install any new browser. Whenever any new browser is installed, it starts appearing in the browser listing.

Support for Google Analytics in Frameless output

Google Analytics allows you to easily track metrics such as page views, session duration, and user interactions and more. Frameless output behaves like a Single Page Application (SPA), which means that opening different topics does not reload the whole output. However, the URL changes when different topics or bookmarks are opened. By tracking this history of URL change, Google analytics captures the data.

Follow these steps to integrate frameless output (hosted on a server) to Google analytics:

Note:

Refer to Google Tag Manager support to learn about how to track metrics using the History change trigger in Google tag manager.

  1. Go to Google Tag Manager and set up your Account.

  2. Find below tag in your workspace.

    google tag

  3. Open RoboHelp project. Select Topic Layout in the Author tab.

  4. Select the Source view of the topic layout and paste the above code in the <head> and <body> tag.

  5. Select Output tab > Output Presets > Frameless > Layout.

  6. Select the topic layout from the Topic Layout dropdown.

    robohelp google analytics

  7. Generate the Frameless output and host it on the server.

  8. Select Preview in your workspace in Google Tag Manager, to open Connect Tag Assistant to your site window.

  9. Enter a URL to your site and select Connect to connect Google Tag Manager with your hosted output.

    google tag connect

    Now as you start navigating through your output, it will collect the data and start showing your tracked history.

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