Creating HTML Help Files /

HTML Help Windows

HTML Help allows you to display help topics in secondary windows. You can define a window in which a topic should be displayed for a Table of Contents item, and for a hyperlink that follows a topic.

To create and edit HTML Help windows of your help project:

1.On the Project tab, in the Project group, click Project Objects.

2.In the drop-down menu, click HTML Help Windows.

The Help Windows dialog displays the windows of your help project in the Window drop-down box. You can use the Add, Rename, and Remove buttons for the corresponding actions with the help windows.

To edit parameters of a window, select it in the Window drop down box, modify the values you want, and click OK.

General Tab

You can enter a caption of the currently selected window.

Buttons Tab

You can specify which buttons should be added to the window's toolbar.

Position Tab

You can define the position of the selected window. Use the Autosizer tool to automatically set the desired position.

Check the flag "Save user defined position after first use" if you want the window to save its position and size that could be changed by the user. If this option is not set, the window will always use the size and position defined by the help system's developer.

Links Tab

You can define links to a topic or to a URL for the window's toolbar buttons: Home, Jump 1, Jump 2. The buttons can be enabled on the Buttons tab.

Navigation Pane Tab

You can enable or disable the navigation pane of the HTML Help viewer and edit its options:

Navigation Pane Width - width of the navigation pane in pixels.

Open with navigation pane closed - if selected, the help window will be displayed with the navigation pane hidden. However, the user will be able to show it by clicking the appropriate button.

Automatically Show/Hide Navigation Pane - if selected, the navigation pane will be shown and hidden when the help window becomes active and inactive respectively.

Auto Sync - if selected, the help system will always find and select the current help topic in the Table of Contents in case the topic is accessed from a hyperlink, Index, search results, and so on.

Search tab - enables or disables the standard Search tab.

Advanced - enables advanced mode for the Search tab by adding additional search options.

Favorites tab - enables or disables the Favorites tab which allows the user to bookmark help topics.

Default tab - allows you to specify the first tab that will be opened when the help window is shown for the first time.

Styles Tab

You can add scroll bars to the selected help window.

Extended Styles Tab

You can also set additional styles to the selected help window such as "Tool window", "Topmost".