AIR Help Install

I am able to generate and install AIR Help for my context-sensitive app no problem. Also, I can use the installed files without running the installer, i.e., I can take the already installed files, copy them "under" my application on another machine, and they will run, apparently without incident. Because this seems to work, I now have a programmer who does NOT want to run the installer to distribute our AIR Help files; he wants to just copy them in.
This doesn't sound kosher to me. I would think the installer modifies the registry, and don't know what else it does. However, I need solid reasons why we should not use this method. What is the official Adobe position on using this method?
TIA

Hi there
StephenD1957 wrote:
This post relates somewhat to my post to this forum a couple of weeks ago about running AIR Help from an application (which no one seems to have any input on).
You seem surprised about that. You have to understand that virtually everyone is a newbee with respect to AIR help. Sure, Adobe hopes it will catch on, but the sad truth is that very few will adopt to a new help technology. Presently there are a very select few individuals with any real experience to offer. Everything is is pure speculation, trial and error.
Cheers... Rick
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Thanks for the Reply.
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Name of .exe file generated from Air Help

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I assume you are creating the file as a java.io.File object. Under those circumstances you should be able to specify the name and target directory when you save it:File f = new File(directory+System.getProperty("file.separator")+filename);Or, if you have already named it:
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Embed fonts in AIR Help?

Hello,
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@petergrainge

My macbook air was installed double system ,one is mac ox 10.6.7 another is windows7. the movie and the sound can't play together in mac system,however, it is normal when I play the same movie in windows7 system

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AIR Help - Why is Print Sequence Disabled?

Hi all,
I have experimented with a copy of a client's Help system in
both RH7 w/packager and the RH8 trial, generating output to the AIR
Help format. After generating & installing the .air package,
and viewing the new .exe help file, I notice the following: Click
the dropdown next to the Print icon and three options are listed
(Print this page, Print sequence, Print entire Help). No matter
what is selected below, Print sequence is always unavailable
(grayed out). This is the case when I generate with either version.
Am I missing something in the settings?
Thanks,
Katie
Katie Carver
Senior Technical Writer
Docs-to-You, LLC

Hi all
In addition to what my colleague and fellow Adobe Community
Expert Peter suggested, I read this thread and am inferring that
perhaps Katie doesn't fully understand how Browse Sequences work.
Particularly in WebHelp. So I see this could impact the operation
of things.
Please allow me to try and explain.
A Browse Sequence is merely a pre-defined path that traverses
two or more topics so that they are presented in a logical order.
You said that you created a Browse Sequence using the Auto-create
feature so I'm assuming you now have several different sequences.
This is because until you change the number of Book levels, you end
up with several sequences. If you wanted a single sequence that
spanned all of the TOC, you would need to auto-create the sequence
and specify 0 as the book levels.
That bit will hopefully help you sort the sequence creation.
Now let's address the sequence *USE*.
When you have created WebHelp output by clicking File >
Generate Primary Layout (assuming the primary is WebHelp) you see
four or five intermediate dialogs that allow you to specify
different parameters that govern how that layout is created.
Typically on the second dialog is an option for Browse Sequences.
So once you have created a sequence, you have to remember to enable
it in WebHelp in order to see it work. At this point, I'm thinking
you *MAY* have done this but it isn't clear. After all, if you have
never used them before, you may not have realized you needed to do
this step. You also may not realize how the sequence appears in
WebHelp.
So once you have defined the sequence and told WebHelp to
present it, you generate and the sequence is presented as two icons
in the "Navigation mini-toolbar". The little toolbar that sits
majestically perched at the top of the TOC, Index, Search, Glossary
and just below the main toolbar. So here's why you may think it's
not working in WebHelp. The behavior of the Previous and Next icons
will change depending on which topic you are viewing. If the topic
presented in the Topic pane is part of a sequence, one or both of
the buttons will be enabled. If the topic is the *FIRST* topic of a
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sequence, you click the Next button and the next topic in the
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that is not part of a browse sequence, bot buttons will be disabled
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Sequence, just as WebHelp disables both the Previous and Next
buttons in the mini toolbar, AIR Help may disable the Print
Sequence feature.
Now that it's hopefully clear how this all works, please
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Sequence and see if you now have an available option. I'm not
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8. So you might be seeing a bug or you might find it now works as
designed. Only you can say for certain.
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install and test that.
Whew... Rick

Air help - autoupdating procedure

Hi all, another question concering Air Help - I did not succeed in using the autoupdate function allthough it seems rather simple. I set the path to an XML file in the output options and when I later publish a newer project to that location (i.e., with a higher version number) then the original help should detect that it is outdated - but it dos not work for me. The name and location of the set XML file is correct.
I used a local file path, and of course I use the view option within Robohelp rather than a full installation becasue I am no admin and cannot install an Air application on my system. Is it possible that the update function sinply does not work with the "view" function of RoboHelp?

What I did to get this working was the following ..
In the properties for the Adobe Air single source layout, under Settings, General, Help Settings, enter a Version number, this number will be recorded in the xml file below.
In the properties for the Adobe Air single source layout, under Settings, View, set Enable Auto Update, enter the path to the xml file and also state the name of the xml file, like the the following: http://support.wedsite.com/Air_Update/autoupdate.xml
Generate the output and in the generated SSL directory for the Air output will not only be the .air file but also the .xml file.
Here is an example generated .xml output:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<update-settings helpid="MyHelpFilePS" version="1.0.048" location="My_Help_File_Product_Support.air" />
Place both of these files (.air and .xml) onto the Web or file server as defined in the path above.
To test:
Install the newly generated Adobe Air application. Close the application
Re-generate the SSL output again but before doing so update the version number. Place this updated version of the .air and .xml onto the Web or file server as defined in the path above.
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If you say yes, it will start to download the updated .air file, and you will see this by a message stated that it's "downloading an update" next to 'About' in the bottom of the air application. Then the application will close, auto-install the update and then re-launch the air application.

How to setup air help auto-update

RH8 HTML.
Im fiddling around with the AIR Help file and trying to get the auto update working.
So far I have the comments syncing perfectly across users with a shared folder on our network.
I'm now publishing the air file to a shared folder again where everyone can get the file and where the update.xml file is sitting.
so I have this looking structure.
\\networkdrive\Adobe_AIR\Generic_AIR\AdobeAIRApplication\Help File.air
\\networkdrive\Adobe_AIR\Generic_AIR\AdobeAIRApplication\Help_Update.xml
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but when I go into the actual instaleld 1.28 version and use the Check Now feature to look for the latest 1.29 which has over written the 1.28 files in the shared folder, it finds nothing.
I cant find any way to manually point to where the update should be found.....do the update files have to sit in the same install directory or something? How does this work....aarrrgghhh
Is there another things I'm not doing?
Thanks.

Hi Nick
Good to hear that you are looking into AIR and Comment syncing is working fine.
Regarding the AIR auto update feature, you need to do the following
While generating the AIR file, you need to specify the update XML file location in AIR Help SSL generation option shown in the image below.
Now install this AIR file, and update the update.xml file and new version of AIR file, and it should work fine.
So the point is the installed air file need to know where to look for the update.xml file, it can be shared folder or a website.
Hope this will help you.
-Praful

Adobe AIR re-install error

Can someone help me with this error please.
"this installation of this application is damaged. Try re-installing or contacting the publisher for assistance"
It happened when I went to HELP in illustrator CS5 on Mac. I started to update it but now I get this when I go to HEPP or SUPPORT.
Peter

This article from adobe should help:
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/403/kb403150.html
Try this first though:
-Drag to trash ALL air applications like Adobe Media Player and Community help client under /Applications and /Applications/Adobe.
-Uninstall AIR, using the Uninstaller App ( located in /Applications/Utilities )
-Delete the following directories if still there:
/Library/Frameworks/Adobe AIR.framework/
/Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Library/Application Support/Adobe/AIR/
Now install AI again.
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The Captivate 4 installation hung on "Air help viewer"

the Captivate 4 installation hung on "Air help viewer", the process is "Adobe AIR application installer.exe"
if I kill this process, captivate go on install and finished without error.
Does anyone has idea for this?

I found new clue here.
"*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=* =*=*=*
Installer Operation: InstallThirdPartyPayloadOperation
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= *=*=*
Installing third party payload
Third party application path:\\pc0118133\c$\SVN\trunk\CLIENT~1\AD1459~1\EXTERN~1\1\payloads\AdobeCaptiv ateReviewer-mul\AIRApplicationRunner.exe
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[     460] Fri May 14 11:27:15 2010 INFO
Checking bootstrapper progress
[     460] Fri May 14 11:27:17 2010 INFO
Checking bootstrapper progress
[     460] Fri May 14 11:27:19 2010 INFO
Checking bootstrapper progress
[     460] Fri May 14 11:27:21 2010 INFO
Checking bootstrapper progress
[     460] Fri May 14 11:27:23 2010 INFO
Checking bootstrapper progress
[     460] Fri May 14 11:27:25 2010 INFO
Checking bootstrapper progress
[     460] Fri May 14 11:27:27"
I check the install log of captivate,
it seem as it is keep on checking something during install payload "Air" and nver pass unless I kill the process of Adobe AIR Application Installer.exe
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Update Adobe AIR help content without necessity of installation for users???

Hello there,
I want to make our manuals available as Adobe AIR help applications. Unfortunately for our users it is not possible to regularly install these applications. Therefore I decided to generate a help viewer as AIR file and help content as RHA file ("help content only" ssl option). So admins only once have to install an initial AIR file. Afterwards users are able to replace help content to update help files.
I proceeded in a similar way as described here:
http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/2010/07/merging_multiple_helps_in_air_help_output.html
In principle this is a good solution - but here is my problem:
Help content itself already consists of different projects (merged projects). Merged projects unfortunately cannot be generated with "help content only" ssl option.
Anyone has got an idea how to satisfy all my conditions:
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Melanie

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My site does have instructions for a true merged AIR Help output but that will not achieve your objective of one install. Sorry but I don't think what you want can be achieved.
http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/merging_webhelp/merging_method_rh9.htm#air
The method is the same for Rh10.
Please feel free to use the Contact page on my site.
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Webhelp v browser-based AIR Help

Hi, I 'm going to be writing help for a web-based application for the first time and am trialing Robohelp 9. Can anyone tell me the difference between the published files for Webhelp and browser-based AIR help? Would there be any technical difference in deploying them to a web server? My apologies if this has been answered elsewhere - I couldn't find a reference to it.
Also (probably a separate question), is there any way to incorporate commenting with either output type? I know this is not supported in the SSLs, but is there a way around it using script? It seems strange that only the 'offline' AIR help includes online commenting. And Adobe's own help pages include it (though they don't seem to use Robohelp!).
Many thanks in anticipation.

Hi Susie et all,
Just spotted this thread and am in the exact same position as you :-)
Really like the browser-based Air help look and trying to keep up with the limitiations and any issues.
We cannot use classic Air Help as the help system supports a web-based product and there is no way that the client will allow a 'special' install for a help system.The trouble starts when you start comparing Air Help, browser-based webhelp and browser-based Air help. In Air Help you are teased with the Favourites tab, the comments pod but they are not available for browser-based Air. The search also works differently in Air formats (results in topic window), something I only became aware of a few days ago. You cannot add custom buttons to tool bar in BB Air something I've found very userful in web help. We have also had a few formatting issues and use a different .css for webhelp and airhelp (mainly to get styles to match the different skins).
There is no doubt that the browser-based Air output looks slick and as John said the skin can be modified to give a corporate feel. But your visitors will need flash player to view content in the left hand pane - its flash that gives it the slick look and feel. I'm trying to run some test this week to find out what will happened without flash player AND to check how the help appears in the various browsers.
I'm curious, have you had any specific issues with running browser-based help on a webserver? We are still awaiting feedback from developers, but so far they have been unable to get browser-based help running on server - just a blank page with grey background. I'm reassured by Peter's comments so hoping it is some security setting that they can deal with. The most sensible approach now is to try and get webehlp running in same environment.
I will definitely post feedback and will be following this thread closely now.
Kind Regards
Craig

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