ClickHelp Gecko Overview

by Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp — all-in-one help authoring tool

This time I am happy to inform you about the latest release of the ClickHelp online documentation platform — Gecko! As geckos are fast and slick, this release is focused on making the work of technical writers faster and smoother. Let’s see what we have here!

Quick Parts

That is a great feature to upgrade the workflow and to improve its speed and efficiency. Quick Parts is a mechanism that helps the writer create standard elements that can further be used in various topics. In fact, you can prepare as many standard elements as you like, and then you can use them as ready-made blocks to ‘build’ any topic you want. Quick Parts is so easy to use: just highlight the content and add it to the Quick Parts list. While adding the content, you can edit its HTML code.

The main advantage of the feature is that these standard elements can be used in all your projects, they are global. What really impressed me is that one and the same element may look differently in different projects. That is very helpful as each project has its own style (colors, icons, etc.). The infoboxes below are shown in two different projects, they have different styles, but the same Quick Parts element was used to create them.

You can create various information and notice boxes, feature description blocks, standard topics with lots of components, etc. The Quick Parts element code may include special ClickHelp components, like Variables or Snippets. This feature can help you bring into life all the ideas on how to optimize new topics assembling.

Table Operations

If you often use tables, now your operations are going to be much faster — adding content, tab navigation, inserting new rows — all that will take just a moment allowing you to create informative and clear content.

• Tab navigation inside a table enables you to use your keyboard while adding content to your table. It’s a lifesaver when you need to type in a huge table and don’t want to use your mouse to move to the next cell.
• Shortcuts are here to make your writing process more convenient. You can add new rows before and after the current row, and move between table cells — no need to use the mouse.
• Resizing a table could take time before. But now you can easily do this using the visual markers to set the size of a table or a column.

Topic Editor — Faster Topic Switching

Another great thing for you: new topic editor mode! When you work with several topics and have to switch among them often, it takes time to unlock your current topic and lock a new one. You can do it faster now. When switching to another topic, the editor remains in editing mode! That fastens the process. If you work with lots of topics during your workday, you will definitely appreciate this change.

For Reviewers

The Gecko Release has a nice improvement for those who review content and add Review Comments. Now, when you select some text in the editor, it shows a small context element near the selection so you can easier add a comment:

If you leave a lot of comments while reviewing content, you will benefit from this small but nice improvement a lot. To say nothing about shortcuts — they are still available to add review comments. Once again, they save you from using the toolbar =)

If you appreciate speed and effectiveness, you will definitely find ClickHelp Gecko Release helpful.

Have a nice day!

Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp.com — best online documentation tool for SaaS vendors