RoboHelp's Interface

- [Instructor] If you're a new RoboHelp user, you obviously have to get familiar with the interface in order to use the tool. If you're an experienced RoboHelp user who's come back to RoboHelp 2015 after using an earlier version, you'll find that there's some major changes in the interface, so in this module, we're going to walkthrough the interface. We have a menu up at the top, and each menu item has its own ribbon, as is now standard. A lot of the controls are in pods, so on the left we have the ProjectManager pod, which lists your Project Files, this is a, obviously tiny little demo project that's got one topic and one style sheet, Broken Links, URLs, there's also a Table of Contents folder, and this project has a Table of Contents, if I double-click it, that Table of Contents itself opens in the left pane.

I can close that left Table of Contents pane, and I go back to the ProjectManager, ditto for the Index, ditto for the Glossary. I can select more pods, by clicking Project or Edit up on the menu, and in either case at the far right end of the ribbon, clicking the Pods icon. And here's a partial list of all the pods that are available if I click that Expand button down at the bottom, it gives me the full list, and different pods will appear in different places on the screen, for example if I click Find and Replace, it appears by default on the right-hand side of the screen.

I can also select Edit, Pods, and if I select the User Defined Variables pod, it opens in the center of the screen, so pods can open all over the place. There's also a Starter pane, which I can access by clicking on Pods, Starter, and on this pane I have access to Recent Projects, I can create a new project, I have access to resources and so on. Again, each pod has its own local toolbar, so for example if I go to Pods, and select Outputs(SSL), which opens in the left pane, this pod has its own toolbar, Create Output, Duplicate Output, Generate Output, and so on.

So, most pods have their own local toolbars in addition to the ribbon. We can also modify the interface at will, by moving, docking, automatically hiding, closing and reopening panes. So for example, let's say that I want to move the Outputs(SSL) pod, I would put my pointer in the pod's title bar, hold the mouse button and drag, and as I do that pod is now moving. This is handy if you have two screens, you can put some of the pods on one screen, and some of the pods on the other screen.

Now that I've moved this pod, how do I dock it? Well, if I put my pointer in the title bar and start moving, and we'll get these little docking aids that show up, and what I can do is put the pointer over any one of these docking aids, and you'll see a shaded area on the screen, that shows you where that pod will land if you let up on the mouse button, like so. So, easy to do. Another thing though, is, I might want to get a pod out of sight, and, traditionally we'd close it.

So, I can close the Outputs(SSL) pod by simply clicking the Close button, but then I might want it again. So it's easy enough to open, but, as a shortcut, which lets me get it out of sight temporarily, and that's the little pushpin, autohide. If I click the pushpin, that pod is apparently gone, but if you look over on the left side of the screen, here's the pod, and, if I hover over it, that pod pops back out and stays open as long as the mouse is sitting on the pod, the pushpin is now pointing to the left, because I pinned that pod to the left side of the screen.

If I want to reopen it, I just click the pushpin again, and it's back to vertical, and that pod is open in a fixed position. Couple of other quick things to see here, over in the upper right-hand corner are the Workspaces. The Workspaces let you use some predefined interface configurations, or you can define your own. For example, we're in the General configuration, but, those of you who come from the earlier versions, or perhaps you just want to see more, what you can do is click on Classic, and this opens up all kinds of windows.

So here's the ProjectManager pod on the left, below it is Outputs, in the left center is Table of Contents, Index, Glossary, and so on, here's your Topic pane, on the right, and at the bottom is the Topic List. And if you want to go back to a different layout, you can set it up yourself by simply clicking on it, back to where we started, you can also create your own, by configuring the screen how you want it, and then saving it. Last thing I'll touch here, is, let's say you want to get rid of the ribbon, let's say you have a long topic and you'd rather use this screen space at the top of the window for the topic rather than the ribbon.

If you click this up arrow just to the left of the word Workspace, that collapses the ribbon up, click it again, it expands it down. So, there's a lot going on in the interface, and the best way to learn it is to use it.