0

Background: I'm a tech writer at our company. I dabble in Javascript from time to time, and I consider my js skill level to be maybe advanced beginner/early intermediate.

Anyway, we have Help content created by Adobe's RoboHelp (version 2017). The Help content is static HTML5 .htm pages. The Help gets installed into a folder as a bunch of static .htm pages on our users' computers when they install our product. The users open our .htm pages in their browser via the file:// protocol.

Our Goal: On our first intro page of our Help, we're planning on showing a "What's New" .htm file inside of an iframe, but we only want to show it the first time a user accesses the documentation.

What I Know and Have Tried: I know on a real web server, I'd probably just use cookies to control this. But on a local computer, cookies aren't persistent, and after the session closes, the local cookie storage gets deleted.

I know that Javascript accessing the file system unfettered is a security no no and isn't possible.

I've looked into the FileSystem API but the things I've read indicate that it is dead and not in the standard going forward.

My Question: Is there some other way in Javascript to have limited trusted access to a single settings file etc for this kind of thing? If so, what is the best / recommended way that keeps the user's computer secure but allows us to store and modify settings in a limited fashion so the user has the best experience?

Note that many of these users probably won't have access to the Internet at all, since their computers will be on a factory floor, so a solution that doesn't require talking back to the Internet is ideal.

I assume most of our users log onto their computers with a standard (non-admin) level login. How many users on the same computer will vary, and I don't have that info, though I think it's likely there will be different shifts that use the same computer.

I'm planning on just storing something simple, like boolean values (ie True/False for if this is the first time they've seen the What's New page etc).

Jared
  • 179
  • 1
  • 10

1 Answers1

0

Some questions:

Might have a look at localStorage.

jmunsch
  • 22,771
  • 11
  • 93
  • 114
  • Thanks for responding @jmunsch. I'll take a look at those links. I assume most of our users log onto their computers with a standard (non-admin) level login. How many users on the same computer will vary and I don't have that info, though I think it's likely there will be different shifts that use the same computer. I'm planning on just storing something simple like boolean values. True/False for if this is the first time they've seen the What's New Page etc. I'll update my post. – Jared Oct 26 '20 at 18:41