Adobe RoboHelp: Highlight Search Results in Topics With Zoom Search

Zoom by Wrensoft is a popular tool to add a better search function to RoboHelp’s WebHelp output. This tool became popular when the search function from WebHelp left something to be desired. But even now ZoomSearch offers much more flexibility than the regular WebHelp search.

The only thing still missing with Zoom Search was the ability to highlight search results in WebHelp output, due to Zoom Search not being able to plug into the highlighting features from WebHelp. In this article I show you how to add topic highlighting to WebHelp output for ZoomSearch. The search highlight will work exactly the same as the regular WebHelp search.

To see an example, follow the link below. Choose the page Search from the menu and try searching for the text Salesbuilder.

• View example output
• Dopwnload required Zoom Search functions for Highlighting Search Results in RoboHelp

Creating your output

The first step is to create your output. You do this in just the way you’re used to. If you’re new to ZoomSearch in RoboHelp, see Peter Grainge’s excellent tutorial for using Zoomsearch with WebHelp for instructions.

Creating the Zoom Search index

You create the Zoom Search index with the settings you use normally. If you’re new to Zoom Search in RoboHelp, see Peter Grainge’s excellent tutorial for using Zoomsearch with WebHelp for instructions.

The only thing you need to check, is that the setting Jump to match and highlight within document is checked. Zoom Search will only provide the highlight information when this option is checked.

After creating the index, place the index in your output.

Modifying the RoboHelp output

The last step to enabling search highlighting is to modify the file whtopics.js in the root of your output.

1. Download the zoomsearch functions.
2. Open the file whtopic.js with a text editor.
3. Remove the following functions from whtopic.js (lines 533-583 in RoboHelp 10):
   • IsHighLightRequired
   • onGetHighlightInfo
   • onGetPaneInfoToHighlight
   • highlightSearch
4. Paste the contents of the downloaded text file into whtopic.js.
5. Save whtopic.js.

Your output is now ready. Search results are now highlighted in topics. Save the file whtopic.js as you need to replace this file with the modified file every time you generate WebHelp.