Adding a "Close" button to dropdown text windows in RH2015, Responsive HTML5?

[thuddles]

Hi everyone!

I'm building a help system in RH 2015, outputting to Responsive HTML5. The help includes an FAQ section. Each FAQ appears as a list of questions; the user clicks a question and the answer opens as dropdown text underneath the question. The user clicks the question again to hide the answer. However, some of the FAQ answers are kind of long, and when the user scrolls to the bottom of the answer, the question scrolls up and off the top of the screen

Here's my question for you. I would like for the user to be able to hide the answer without having to scroll back up to the question. Is it possible to add a "Close" button to the bottom of dropdown text in Responsive HTML5? I'm not finding anything helpful in the RH help, other than it's possible to add a "close window" button in Microsoft HTML Help output, but that doesn't help me!

All ideas are appreciated. Thanks!

Tim

[Peter Grainge · Accepted solution]

That would require some custom javascript that I haven't seen posted on these forums or elsewhere, which is not to say it doesn't exist. It's more that in years of following these forums, I haven't seen anyone even request what you are seeking. Most users seem happy to either move on down the list leaving things open or to scroll back up and close it themselves.

Maybe you have a friendly developer who can help you?

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

[thuddles]

I was kind of afraid that would be the case. Maybe I need to learn (ugh) some Javascript. Fat chance of that anytime soon. And an even fatter chance of getting some help from one of our developers. They're all insanely busy, although they are very friendly.

We'll just have to let those users scroll (for now). Thanks for your advice!

[prhmusic2]

I zeroed in on "some of the FAQ answers are kind of long, and when the user scrolls to the bottom of the answer, the question scrolls up and off the top of the screen" so that's what I'm responding to - not the request to code JavaScript.

I would make the long(er) chunks of text shorter. I would move any parts of the text from the FAQ to a topic within the "regular" topics. I wouldn't  have information spread in multiple areas. I would combine the content of the FAQ in the appropriate place(s) within your other topics and chunk the information into shorter topics. I wouldn't have content in both the FAQ and in a "regular" help topic about the same subject.

I say all that because I've been down that road. At a previous employer, there was a FAQ that included a multi-step procedure - I believe it had 18 steps - for how to add X; then, in the online Help, there was a multi-step procedure for how to add X and - I believe you may easily guess where I'm going with this - there were 15 steps in the regular help. Which one was right? It turned out the FAQ hadn't been updated for a few years and there were references to outdated / obsolete systems. At the time, it became a "hot" issue to resolve as "adding X" to the system was a cornerstone piece to the data stored within the system.

In the same situation today, I would create snippets for the steps and single-source the FAQ and the help topics from the same project.