WebHelp Responsive with Feedback System

Layout

The layout of the WebHelp Responsive with Feedback system is platform independent and is able to adapt to any screen size. It is highly customizable and relies on a template mechanism that allows you to control the position of various functional template components to suit your particular requirements.

You can select from several different styles of layouts (for example, by default, you can select either a tiles or tree style of layout). Furthermore, each of these layouts include a collection of skins that you can choose from, or you can customize your own.

The WebHelp Responsive with Feedback system also contains a Comments section at the bottom of the pane. This section is where you can interact with users through a comment system.

WebHelp Output

Managing Comments

To add a new comment, click the Add New Comment button, or click Reply to add a comment to an existing thread. You can click on the Log in button on the right side of this bar to be authenticated as a user and your user name will be included in any comments that you add. If you do not have a user name, you can click on the Sign Up button to create a new user.

After you log in, your name and user name are displayed in the Comments bar, along with the Log off and Edit buttons. Click the Edit button to open the User Profile dialog box where you can customize the following options:

• Your Name - You can use this field to edit the initial name that you used to create your user profile.
• Your email address - You can use this field to edit the initial email address that you used to create your profile.
• You can choose to receive an email in the following situations:
  • When a comment is left on a page that you commented on.
  • When a comment is left on any topic in the WebHelp Classic system.
  • When a reply is left to one of my comments.
• New Password - Allows you to enter a new password for your user account.

  Note

  The Current Password field from the top of the User Profile is mandatory if you want to save the changes you make.

If you are an administrator, you can manage user information and comments. For more information, see Managing Users and Comments in a Feedback-Enabled WebHelp System.

Search Feature

When you enter search terms in the Search field, the results are displayed in the results page. When you click on a result, the topic is opened in the main pane and the search results are highlighted.

The Search feature is also enhanced with a rating mechanism that computes scores for every page that matches the search criteria. These scores are then translated into a 5-star rating scheme. The search results are sorted depending on the following:

• The number of keywords found in a single page (the higher the number, the better).
• The context (for example, a word found in a title scores better than a word found in unformatted text). The search ranking order, sorted by relevance is as follows:
  • The search phrase is included in a meta keyword
  • The search phrase is in the title of the page
  • The search phrase is in bold text in a paragraph
  • The search phrase is in normal text in a paragraph

Rules that are applied during a search include:

• Boolean searches are supported using the following operators: and, or, not. When there are two adjacent search terms without an operator, or is used as the default search operator (for example, grow flowers is the same as grow or flowers).
• The space character separates keywords (an expression such as grow flowers counts as two separate keywords: grow and flowers).
• Do not use quotes to perform an exact search for multiple word expressions (an expression such as "grow flowers", returns no results since it searches for two separate words).
• indexterm and keywords DITA elements are an effective way to increase the ranking of a page (for example, content inside keywords elements weighs twice as much as content inside an H1 HTML element).
• Words composed by merging two or more words with colon (":"), minus ("-"), underline ("_"), or dot (".") characters count as a single word.
• Always search for words containing three or more characters (shorter words, such as to or of are ignored). This rule does not apply to CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) languages.

HTML tag elements are also assigned a scoring value and these values are evaluated for the search results. For information about editing these values, see Editing Scoring Values of Tag Elements in Search Results.

This output format is compatible with the most recent versions of the following common browsers:

• Edge
• Internet Explorer (IE 8 or newer)
• Chrome
• Firefox
• Safari
• Opera