Adena Frazer, senior developer at Suite Solutions, introduces the newly released SuiteHelp 3.1, a modern HTML5 WebHelp platform with advanced search, flexible deployment options, and mobile optimization. This webinar includes an overview of SuiteHelp functionality and technical architecture.
2. Who am I?
Adena Frazer
• Background in Computer Science and Education
• Early and senior member of the Suite Solutions team
• Given many public and private training seminars over the past five
years
• Extensive expertise implementing DITA and CMS solutions for a wide
variety of organizations
• Responsible for internal training and mentoring for developers at Suite
Solutions
• Help companies get it right the first time
3. About Suite Solutions
Our Vision: Enable companies to engage their customers by providing quick
access to relevant information
• Help companies get it right the first time
• XML-based Authoring/Publishing Solutions
• Enterprise Intelligent Dynamic Content
• Consultancy, Systems Integration, Application Development
• Cross-Industry Expertise
• High Tech, Aerospace & Defense
• Healthcare, Discrete Manufacturing
• Blue Chip Customer Base
• Hundreds of Person Years of Experience on Staff
4. Main Topics
Introduction to SuiteHelp
• Highlights
• Default Skin
• Sample Customizations
• What Distinguishes SuiteHelp?
• New in SuiteHelp 3.1
• Integration with other Products
Technical Architecture
SuiteHelp Deployment Options
5. Highlights
Overview
• Cross-platform, cross-browser, mobile-friendly webhelp platform
• Leverages modern web technologies: HTML5, CSS3, Ajax
• Multi-lingual support, including Far-Eastern and RTL languages
Feature Highlights
• Collapsible TOC, index, search, glossary, browse, breadcrumbs
• Support for context sensitive help
• Advanced search capability: fuzzy, phrase, prefix, Boolean, NEAR
Technical Highlights
• Shell and page content are easily customized using standard CSS
• Fully automatic generation and compilation using a command-line or via a
DITA Toolkit plug-in
12. What Distinguishes SuiteHelp?
Great Performance
• Extremely fast output generation
• Loads quickly in every browser
Follows Modern Best Practices
• No frames
• Eliminates reliance on outdated HTML features
• Minimalistic and semantic use of HTML
• Uses new HTML5 elements such as nav and article where appropriate
• Makes content more accessible to disabled users using devices like
screen readers
• Makes content more parsable by search engines
• Javascript is JSLint compliant
• Ensures high quality JS code
13. What Distinguishes SuiteHelp?
Built on Modern Web Technologies
• Optimized for mobile devices using responsive design
• Media query
• Served via AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML)
• Eliminates need to refresh the whole page every time the content
changes
• Graceful Degradation
• Designed for modern web architectures while still remaining
backwards compatible with older browsers
14. What Distinguishes SuiteHelp?
Flexible Deployment
• Generation
• Support for Windows, Linux and Macintosh
• Fully automatic generation and compilation either using a
command-line or via a DITA Open Toolkit plug-in
• Ability to customize output without reliance on the DITA-OT
• Viewing
• Ability to deploy on server or client without any special software
installation requirements
• Option to compile into a single-file executable for easy deployment
on a client, similar to HTMLHelp CHM
15. New in SuiteHelp 3.1
• Native facility for customizing and generating output without requiring the
DITA-OT
• Advanced Search
• Word morphology/fuzzy search
Example: searching for configured will return results for configure and
configuring
• Exact Phrase search - surrounded by quotes
• Prefix search
Example: searching for config* will return all pages containing words
beginning with the prefix config
• Boolean search: AND, OR, NOT
• NEAR search - with a default distance as well as a specified number of
spaces between the two words
• Rank weighting for title, keywords
16. Integration with Common Applications
Authoring Tools
• oXygen
• XMetaL
• DITA-FMx
CMS
• SDL LiveContent Architect (formerly Trisoft)
• IXIASOFT DITA CCMS
• Bluestream XDocs
• easyDITA
• Astoria
• Suite Solutions x:Point (SharePoint)
SuiteHelp users have been driving the push to integrate SuiteHelp with
different tools in the Content Lifecycle tool chain
17. Technical Architecture
Preprocessing
• Performed by the DITA Accelerator
• Greater efficiency, accuracy, and speed than the DITA-OT
pre-processing, overcoming known bugs and architectural constraints
Generation of HTML Topics
• Utilizes one of the following options:
• DITA Open Toolkit style sheets (DITA2XHTML): allows you to
leverage your existing XHTML customizations
• Native DITA Accelerator formatting: Element mapping file, no XSL
SuiteHelp User Interface and Search Generation
• Performed by the DITA Accelerator
• Includes nav-bar, header, footer, breadcrumbs, and overall UI format
• Extensively customizable
19. DITA Accelerator
Core Technology
• Set of libraries for processing XML content
• Generates variety of output formats: HTML5, SuiteHelp and EPUB
• Used as the main rendering engine for the SuiteShare dynamic
publishing platform
Internationalization Support
• Integrates ICU (International Components for Unicode) libraries
• See http://site.icu-project.org/ for more details
20. DITA Accelerator
Developed in Haskell
• Functional programming language
• Strong static typing
• Lazy evaluation
• Extensive open source modules
Benefits for the DITA Accelerator
• Great performance
• It allows the codebase to be powerful, clear, and concise
21. Methods for Customization
• Configuration Files
• UI Configuration files
• Classmap: Maps between DITA elements and attributes to HTML5
• Shakespearean Templates
• Hamlet – HTML templating language
• Lucius – CSS templating language
• Advantages:
- Compile-time guarantees on well-formed content
- Static type safety, aids in the prevention of XSS
(cross-site scripting) attacks
- Automated checking of valid URLs through type-safe URLs
• See http://www.yesodweb.com/book/shakespearean-templates
• JavaScript
22. SuiteHelp Deployment Options
Supported Operating Systems
• Windows, Linux, and Macintosh
SuiteHelp Package
• HTML5 files, graphics, CSS, Javascript
• Full-text search index
• SuiteHelp Server
Deploying to a Server
• Utilize an existing webserver such as IIS, Apache, NGINX
• Utilize the bundled SuiteHelp server
Deploying to a Client
• Utilize the bundled SuiteHelp server
• Standalone SuiteHelp - Single compiled package with web server
• SuiteHelp package without a server – basic search, no Ajax
23. Next steps…
• Check out the new SuiteHelp Users’ Forum:
http://www.suite-sol.com/forums
• Stay tuned for upcoming webinars
• Generating and Viewing SuiteHelp
• SuiteHelp Customization
24. Be in touch
For additional information, contact us:
solutions@suite-sol.com
U.S. Office EMEA Office
(609) 360-0650 +972-2-993-8054
www.suite-sol.com