A nice tweak suggested by one of our clients (thank you, Caroline!)
“When navigating to a sub-topic via a link, can the parent topic auto-expand?
That is good one indeed. If you click on a topic link somewhere inside a topic’s body, it did now automatically expand the parent topic in the Table of Contents panel, making the new selected topic still invisible.
Auto-expanding the new topic’s parent(s) is a perfect enhancement indeed.
And today, we have implemented just that 🙂
Enjoy!
A quick fix for an old bug, reported by user Caroline:
The search box in the Video and Document Managers didn’t work, at all.
But now it does 🙂
Small fix today for a styling problem reported by one of our users (thanks Crest2208!).
In the live manuals, when enabling the Next/Previous topic links at the top, there was a weird extra empty space below the links.
Fixed now!
Today, a big improvement to the search engine for live manuals. Suggested by users for many years, but now finally available:
The ability to search for exact phrases using quotes, e.g. “code block” or “manual settings”.
An improvement for the “Link to Topic” screen, suggested by user Michael:
“In our guides it’s helpful to be able to search for specific page names when setting up new topic links. The only snag is multiple topics with the same or similar names.
Is there a way to show the ‘breadcrumbs’ so we can see where the pages are nested?”
Definitely makes senses, so here’s what we did:
When you enter the Link to Topic screen, it looks like this (nothing changed here):
In the Link to Topic screen, as soon as you start a search, the layout changes and includes the path/breadcrumb to the topic:
In the Manula Account settings, you can set your own Google Analytics ID, so that you can track page views for your online manuals in your own Analytics account.
However, when doing so, the live manual pages also include *our* Manula Analytics ID, so that we can keep track of page views across all client manuals.
If, for any reason, you would prefer not to have our tracking ID in your manual pages, it is now possible to switch that off, with a new setting under Account Settings, called
[x] Allow inclusion of Manula Analytics ID
which is switched ON by default.
A few weeks ago, Manula user Joe asked:
Is there a way that you can access the library of images, videos and files etc…….. rather than having to access from a topic when inserting?
I would like to upload all the files, videos etc in advance so that I can use them across all the different topics if required. Or, if I need to replace an image, I don’t want to have to go back into the topic editor to do so.
Excellent point, Joe!
So as of today, there is new Media Manager item in the menu, even at the account level, that lets you go straight to the Image, Video and Document managers:
Another nice addition suggested by one of our clients (thanks Nick!):
It is now possible to include the Next and Previous topic links at the TOP. Or at the bottom. Or both. Or just not have them at all. You choose!
This setting can be found on the Customization tab of the Manual Settings screen:
Previous/Next Topic links showing at the top of a topic:
Enjoy and stay safe!
We’re always looking to improve the loading speed of the online manuals, to make navigating them as “snappy” as possible.
The next step we made in this area is the “lazy loading” of all included images. Images are now only loaded as they come into view. In other words, images at the top of the image (and in view) and loaded instantly, but others further down the page are only loaded “as needed”, when they are scrolled into view.
This makes the navigating between topics even snappier than before, especially on mobile devices and on slower connections.
In the past few weeks, we have been working on a major overhaul of the code that renders the live online manuals, to make them faster and to resolve the most commonly reported user interface annoyance.
These changes will make browsing the online manuals a much faster and more pleasant experience.
Basically, the main change here is that when clicking a link to a different topic (either from the Table of Contents of using a link inside topic contents), it does not do a full page re-load anymore. It now only loads the content of the new topic into the content panel on the right.
Because of this change, the ToC does not have to be 1. re-generated by our server and 2. downloaded to your browser, making the loading of the new topic much faster, especially for manuals with lots of topics. Another big advantage of this is change is that you don’t lose your place / scroll position in the ToC.
Up till now, the ToC panel has always been “locked” to the content panel, always scrolling together. With this overhaul, we finally resolved that common complaint.
The Table of Contents panel can now be scrolled independently of the topic content AND it retains its scroll position when navigating to a different topic!
Enjoy!
