Previous/Next Button Tag

Hi, hghew,

For compiled HTML Help (.chm), you have the option to add Previous and Next buttons to the toolbar of the HTML Help viewer instead of embedding Previous and Next hyperlinks in every topic.

Rick Stone (Adobe Community Expert and Microsoft Help MVP) describes how to add the toolbar buttons in his Tips and Tricks file, which you can download from here:

http://www.robowizard.com/RoboWizard/NewProject.htm#Downloads/Tips_and_Tricks.htm

Some additional sources of information are as follows. Both articles describe how to add the buttons by editing your HTML Help project (.hhp) file with HTML Help Workshop.

http://helpware.net/FAR/far_faq.htm#HH_Window_Buttons
http://www.help-info.de/en/Help_Info_HTMLHelp/hh_chm_add_buttons.htm

Pete

As it happens I am investigating something like this right now, having found several problems with the Browse Sequence mechanism.

It isn't too much work if you plan it carefully. Here's how I did it.

I made a couple of small images (actually I grabbed the Back/Forward buttons from Explorer) and inserted them into one topic, at the end of the Heading 1 which starts each topic. I set Image_Properties > Text_Wrapping to "Right" so that they appear in the top right-hand corner of each topic. Note that if you do this, you must insert the Right arrow first, then a space, then the Left arrow (without the space, RoboHelp only allowed one link for both images). I then added a screen tip to the image "Next/Previous in sequence". Then I added hyperlinks.

After this I was able to select both images, and use Copy/Paste to add them to all topics. When you double-click, you get the hyperlink properties dialog, and can correct the links. I arranged my screen so that the relevant part of the ToC was open on the screen, so I could see where I was in the sequence.

Of course this is a PITA and error-prone, but testing is relatively easy, if you have Auto-synchronize_TOC in Window Properties. The buttons are always in the same place, so you can just click repeatedly while watching the ToC.

Success!

--- Derek

Why not use a template with these buttons in a header. You'd have to think about what they'd link to though. You could handle this by manually linking each button but this would be fairly slow and cumbersome. Not sure you could do it any other way as how else would the project know what topic was before/after the current one.