HelpIndex Java Applet |
HEY! We are running HelpIndex version 2 here, with its full release imminent.
Do you like it? Give us feedback please.
Please note our new UK
address and telephone number.
NEW: Sales and support in USA
by Sun Country Software, Inc. and on-line credit card sales should be available
soon from WebWare Online.
If you want to use HelpIndex on your site,
please pay for a full licence after your free 30 day evaluation period.
Please email feedback, bug reports and suggestions for improvement to Chris Cant. Please let us know how or where you heard about HelpIndex. Ask to be put on our mailing list for information on new versions and other releases. |
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Its Contents view has an Explorer-like logical tree display of all the pages on the site. The Index allows the user to search for a keyword on the site's pages.
HelpIndex can either appear on your page or in a separate window.
Typically you will want to use HelpIndex to provide help for your site.
PHD Help Index is server-independent. HelpIndex does not do a text search on the server.
Help Index uses a predefined contents and list of indices that you have set up. Like other help systems, in the Index a user types in the starting letters that they want to look up. All possible indices are displayed. When a page is selected, it is displayed in the target browser window.
You can use the MakeHelpIndex Java application to build help indices automatically from your web pages. Alternatively, you can set up or edit index files by hand, provided you use the HelpIndex Index File Format.
You can use language files to make HelpIndex use labels in your preferred language.
There are some specialised uses for HelpIndex. Java programmers may want to use to an index to the JDK. Or HelpIndex can be set up as a small web database.
So far we have only tested HelpIndex on PC Netscape Navigator 2.0, 3.0 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0. The JDK 1.0 appletviewer does not run it very well. Please let us have reports for other browsers and platforms.
Note that the evaluation edition of HelpIndex is version 1.7.1. This only has an index and is deliberately limited to displaying a maximum of 500 indices and a maximum of 100 URLs. This will in fact be big enough for a lot of sites. You should purchase a full licence for HelpIndex to increase these limits.
Sorry, but HelpIndex version 2 is only available to users with a full licence, ie you may only use version 1.7.x for evaluation purposes.
Language files have a new format.
Note that the version 2 class and gif files are now about 80kB; these will take users longer to download. The introduction of new browsers that support Java Archive (JAR) files will reduce the load time, as a single JAR file will hold all the HelpIndex files in a compressed format. A HelpIndex.jar file will be produced as soon as the technology is stable.
Coming soon |
We are developing a Windows only program as an enhancement to MakeHelpIndex.
This HelpIndex Workshop allows you to work on HelpIndex projects. It continues to allow existing web pages to be scanned. Crucially, it allows editing of the Contents tree and the Index as well as language files. And importantly, it remembers these changes if you re-scan your web pages. Watch this space... |
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Note that format 1.2 also has extra parameters to the URL record which will eventually be used to display a tree hierarchy of URLs. This feature will be in version 2.0, due in the new year.
HelpIndex 1.6 will read your existing format 1.1 and earlier index files correctly.
There are various other improvements to MakeHelpIndex.
Otherwise please email support@phdcc.com.
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