Typically, an update to the Web Assistant Framework was released within days of me finalizing my book, The Complete Web Assistant. There is only one significant change in this release, which is the ability to insert Placeholders into the Bubble Text of a Help Tile or Guided Tour Step.
The functionality can be found on the Text tabbed page of the Edit Content dialog box, as shown below:
Clicking on the Insert Placeholder button displays the following dialog box:
Here, you can select the Placeholder you want to insert from the Select Placeholder field’s drop-down. There are only a limited number of Placeholders available, and these are limited to technical information available within the Web Assistant Framework. Specifically, you can insert:
- Current language
- Main Screen Identifier
- Product
- Screen Identifier
- Sub-screen identifier
- System (not often used)
- Product Version
(I’m not sure what the difference is between the Main Screen Identifier and the Screen Identifier – I assume it is to support nested structures – over and above tabbed pages – used on some screens.)
Once you select a Placeholder, the code of this Placeholder is shown in the Placeholder field, but unlike Placeholders in Book Pages or Simulation projects, you cannot change this. Click Insert to insert the placeholder code into the Bubble Text. Again, differing from other uses of Placeholders, the code, and not the resolved value will be shown in the text field, as shown below:
However, at display time (not in Edit mode), the value is substituted in, as shown below:
And that’s it. This is not as useful as Placeholders in Simulations or Book Pages, but hopefully it will be extended in future releases. (And if you need to insert placeholders to other objects or elements, you can always use the Web Editor to do that).
