Highlight Search Text in RoboHelp X5
If anyone uses Macromedia RoboHelp extensively, then you probably notice that when you conduct a search, it will not highlight the search text on the results page. There is a great need for this feature, and it has been stressed since RoboHelp 3. But after two versions, this feature is still not available.
So I decided to take action and try to make it work. After spending numerous hours, I found a solution that will highlight the searched text on a page using RoboHelp X5. This will only work in WebHelp though (FlashHelp uses different functions in their javascript files). It's probably not the best way to do it, but it works. I haven't tested it out thoroughly yet, so if you find any bugs, please let me know.
Highlight Search Example Page
highlight_search_X5.js - javascript file
Basically, I included the ''highlight_search_X5.js' javascript file on all of the help pages. Then, on the <body> tag of all those pages, I called a function on the javascript file ( <body onLoad="beginSearch()"> ). This will check to see if the current Left Pane window is on Search and if a search was conducted. If you are using Dreamweaver templates to create the help files, then it should be very simple.
Hope someone finds this useful.
----------------------------------------------------------
Update: 1/17/05
----------------------------------------------------------
For more information on how this works, Peter Grainge has written a great explanation on his site. To visit his site, go to www.grainge.org, and it should be under 'Authoring > Highlight Search Text'.
