ClickHelp Oasis Update Overview
FAQ on Technical Writing
As you may know, I use ClickHelp for technical writing (if you’re a new follower, you can learn more about me and my career path here: FAQ on Technical Writing). Recently, ClickHelp rolled out a new update called Oasis. Let’s take a closer look at what there’s to be excited about!
Global Find and Replace
Did you face cases when you need to reread your text in order to find and correct mistakes? Did you need to find topics with old footers and replace them with the new ones? Now you don’t have to do it manually, ClickHelp released a new feature — Global Find and Replace. Thanks to this feature, it is now possible to find and replace:
- Text (including source code). When searching for text, it is also possible to use extra filters: match case, match the whole word, use regular expressions.
- Topic links
- File links
- Topics (title and source)
- Styles
- Scripts
- ToDo items
- Index keywords
- TOC nodes (captions)
- Unresolved/Resolved/Deleted review comments
Here is how it works. For example, you need to find a word in your projects and replace it:
- You fill in the search string.
- Set up filters.
- And then, you’ll see the result
- Fill in the ‘replace with’ string.
- If you need to replace the word in one particular topic, just check the box next to its title.
- In another case, when you need to replace the word in all projects, just click Replace All.
- Then you’ll see the log.
When a document is updated via global replace, a version is created automatically for it in Version History, in the case if you do something wrong, it can be rolled back and there is an audit trail record on who made the replacement and when.
Here are other use cases that ClickHelp provides:
- Find and replace all occurrences of a specific word/phrase/source code snippet and replace it with a variable, snippet or conditional block (convert to snippet).
- Find and replace content styles (especially useful when importing from Word with automatic CSS class generation).
- Find and replace all occurrences of an external URL (e.g. pointing to a YouTube video or to a page on your website).
- Find and replace colors and font names across all your style files (e.g. as a part of your company re-branding).
- Find (and replace) variables and output tags — e.g. when you need to rename them.
- Find all references to a JavaScript function or variable.
And this is not the full list of use cases!
Reader UI Templates
ClickHelp was always full of branding opportunities, but now it’s more convenient — you don’t need CSS knowledge at all. There are two main options:
- You can choose a premade template from the offered variants. Just a single click and your documentation has a modern look.
- And you can design it according to your needs: customize the selection and hover colors, headers visibility, and size, background images, text and link colors, etc. Also, you can now limit the max-width of your content easily to give your topics an easy-to-read look.
Here is how it looks inside:
Accessibility
ClickHelp became more accessible. Here are the improvements:
- WCAG 2.0 Level AA compliance implemented for reader UI and improved for author UI.
- Section 508 compliance implemented for reader UI and improved for author UI.
If you don’t know what it is and why it’s important, here are some notes for you:
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is developed through the W3C process in cooperation with individuals and organizations around the world, with a goal of providing a single shared standard for web content accessibility that meets the needs of individuals, organizations, and governments internationally.
- Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act , as amended by the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 requires federal agencies to develop, procure, maintain and use information and communications technology that is accessible to people with disabilities — regardless of whether or not they work for the federal government. The US Access Board established the Section 508 standards that implement the law and provides the requirements for accessibility.
As you can see, ClickHelp is highly accessible for your tech writing team members and readers!
Conclusion
ClickHelp Oasis lives up to its name — it really makes life easier just like a sip of cold water in a desert.
If you want to try all these cool features by yourself, just get a free trial.
