Bookmarks and FlashHelp

[Guest]

Hello,
This is another newbie question, but I had put this problem to the backburner for a while and now am trying to deal with it again. My company is using FlashHelp (RoboHelp 6.0) for our new product, and I'm trying to figure out how to get bookmarks to work correctly. Our program has windows with multiple tabs, and I don't want a separate topic for each tab. I would like the program help to be able to jump to a designated point in the Help topic for that specific tab.
I've reviewed Robowizard's bookmark tutorial, but FlashHelp is confusing me. As an example, we have a Fuel Product window with a Fuel Mix tab. I'm trying to link to the Fuel Mix section of the Fuel Product Help, so I have the program pointing here: fuel_product_maintenance.htm#Fuel_Mix (where #Fuel_Mix is the name of the bookmark). However, when I generate the Help file, the link always goes to the top of the help topic. What is confusing me the most is that the bookmarks aren't appearing in the TrueCode window, so I'm not sure if that is why the program is not picking them up. I am not an expert with HTML code, so I'm not sure if I need to manually code something or what.
Thanks very much for any advice!

Erin

[Guest]

Erin,

Just for some additional info: What kind of links to your topics are you using in your company's program? Are you using context-sensitive help with map IDs or URLs? Or are the program's help links hard-coded to point to the bookmarked sections of the help topic?

--Ben

[Guest]

Hi Ben,
We are not using Map IDs and context-sensitive help (our program does not have field-level help). For each window or tab in the program, I have manually entered the links to the correct Help topic. (And since it's still early in the development process, it hasn't been that many so far.)

[Guest]

Erin,

Just to make sure your bookmark is present, look in your help topic code for the following:

<a name="Fuel_Mix"></a>

This should be there if you added the bookmark with the Insert > Bookmark menu or used the Insert Bookmark button. Looking again at your first post, it looks like your link would be right, but your <a> tags should not have the hash mark #.

If you click the Topics tab in the bottom right (next to WYSIWYG, TrueCode, etc.), you should also see your bookmarks with the white flag icon. Let us know what you see.

--Ben

[Guest]

OK, so it IS there then. No wonder I couldn't find it!
This appears in the code line of my section heading:
<a name=General></a>
All the bookmarks are also displaying in the Project Window.
So how can I get the help topic to display at that bookmark?
Thanks again for the help (and patience)!

[Guest]

I'm sorry, I'm not quite clear from your reply: Does each bookmark within the same help topic have a unique <a name>? If you have the same one for each section of the topic, in this case "General," the browser may be getting confused and defaulting to the top of the topic. (But you indicate that you have multiple bookmarks.)

For example, as noted, the Fuel Mix section could have <a name=Fuel_Mix></a>, while an introduction could have <a name=intro></a>, and the Rocket Fuel section could have <a name=rocket></a>. Your links to these in the program would then look respectively like:

<a href="fuel_product_maintenance.htm#Fuel_Mix" target="_blank">Help</a>
<a href="fuel_product_maintenance.htm#intro" target="_blank">Help</a>
<a href="fuel_product_maintenance.htm#rocket" target="_blank">Help</a>

Thanks for your patience too while we get this hammered out! I hope this is helping...

--Ben

[Guest]

Yes this is definitely helping! I think I'm getting somewhere! :)
Each topic does have its own unique bookmarks. I checked them all and they all show up in the code as <a name>.
Our program is written in C++, so I'm not sure if that has something to do with the way I enter the topic links. For example, the Rocket Fuel window has a Booster tab that needs the help topic assigned to it. I right-click on the screen and enter the topic name as rocket_fuel.htm. My problem was that when I tried to get it to go to the Booster bookmark, I'd enter rocket_fuel.htm#Booster, but the program would still jump to the top of the Help topic. I tried to enter the links as in the examples you gave, but the field doesn't allow that many characters. (I asked the developer to fix that for me.) So I guess my question now is that since our program is not a web app, would the links work if there are entered using the HTML language in your examples?

[Guest]

Aha! An important detail. I think you talked about a Web project in another post, so I assumed that we were talking about a Web project and didn't ask to make sure.

It sounds like you have everything set up on your side that you would need. Have you checked with your C++ developers to see if there is a certain syntax for linking to HTML bookmarks?

[Guest]

Sorry for the confusion!
According to the developer, the way the program is set up is that it just needs the web address of the Help topic entered on each screen. So I tried entering the help/bookmark address I created in a browser window, to see if it would jump to the bookmark. I thought that would help me figure what to enter for the program. (For example, I pasted the Help.htm#rocket_fuel_maintenance.htm#Booster address in a Firefox window, where Help.htm is the main help file, rocket_fuel_maintenance.htm is the topic, and Booster is the bookmark.) But this went to the top of the Help topic as well. So (and this seems like a really stupid question) how do I include a bookmark in a web address?
Thank you again!

Erin

[Guest]

quote:

---

For example, I pasted the Help.htm#rocket_fuel_maintenance.htm#Booster address in a Firefox window, where Help.htm is the main help file, rocket_fuel_maintenance.htm is the topic, and Booster is the bookmark.

---

This kind of URL looks similar to Peter Grainge's method of calling WebHelp/FlashHelp using URLs, which also links to a concern with using this method in IE 7. It doesn't say anything about having an additional bookmark on the end, though. I don't know if Web browsers are equipped to handle two hash marks in a single URL, so that second hash may be getting ignored.

If you try linking to just the topic HTML file (for example, rocket_fule_maintenance.htm) and the bookmark (#Booster), I would think that the result would be that topic opening in your browser to that bookmark, just with the "Show" link at the top of the topic and no toolbar or TOC pane. The main .htm file is what gets the TOC pane and toolbar to show up, but it may be that the bookmark won't work with two hashes.

If you haven't done this, try linking to just:

rocket_fuel_maintenance.htm#Booster

...instead of:

Help.htm#rocket_fuel_maintenance.htm#Booster

...and see if it goes to the bookmark.

[Guest]

Well, after reviewing that WebHelp tutorial, and trying several different combinations (like #Booster#rocket_fuel_maintenance.htm; rocket_fuel_maintenance.htm#Booster, etc.) I am still having no luck. I suppose that since the topic is coming up, that's good enough. I just really wanted to save the user from scrolling through topics to find the related information. Anyway, I'm just going to let this go for now, as I can't think of anything else to try, and if I ever do find a solution, I'll be sure and post it.
Thanks so much for all the help Ben!

[Guest]

Erin,

As a workaround, you can provide a list of links at the top of your help topic that link to the bookmarks. It's not exactly what you were after, but it does save the user some scrolling. Good luck!

--Ben