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J
James_K__Patrick
Inspiring
November 9, 2009
Question

Controlling window size and positioning in RH8 WebHelp

  • November 9, 2009
  • 1 reply
  • 692 views

Evening all,

I've seen a post before about controlling the size and/or positioning or RH WebHelp windows, but I haven't been able to find it again.

I'm generating WebHelp in RH8 and at this point am using the default skin and whatever default tri-pane and CSH windows RH chooses to use.

Question is: how do I control the size and position of these windows? Or can I?

I suspect they're set in a .js, but don't know which one. I know I can create new windows, and if I recall correctly, I can make one for CSH and one for the classic tri-pane help display. Is this how folks typically control the windows used to display RH content? Or do they muck about in the original .js files?

Or, and this is the more likely, am I just being too anal-retentive about this and I should just let RH do its default thing and not worry about it?

Thanks - I'm just a bit confused here,

Patrick

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Captiv8r
Captiv8r
Legend
November 9, 2009

Hi Patrick

If you aren't working with a programmer to connect your WebHelp to an application, you really don't have much control over the placement and attributes that are used.

Note that when you create a project in RoboHelp HTML, you have an ability to create a WebHelp window with the desired attributes. But really, all that does is configure the way a window will open if you are using something called the "WebHelp API" to open topics. As you stated earlier, JavaScript is actually used by the API to open the window.

Cheers... rick

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J
James_K__PatrickAuthor
Inspiring
November 9, 2009

Rick,

Thanks for the quick reply.

Yes, I'm working with a developer.We've implemented a field-level CSH help solution using the WebHelp API for the first go-round.

Now we're working on integrating the existing CSH help with the classic tri-pane help UI. And it's one of  my jobs to write the specification for how/when/where/why the help displays.

So perhaps I AM being too anal-retentive and should ask a more general question to start with:

When you've got both CSH content (called by the API and displayed in a plain-jane, no controls window) as well as a full blown task-based help system displaying in the classic tri-pane UI, how do folks integrate these two?

When the CSH is called, do they just let the user click the "Show" link to display the tri-pane UI?

Or do they make a new window for CSH that mimics the tri-pane UI so the user has the same UI experience regardless of the method used to access help?

Just trying to come up with some reasonable ideas here to base my wireframe on.

Thanks,

Patrick

Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 11, 2009

Peter,

Thanks for the details of how you folks do CSH - it's given me some good ideas for our version due out mid-2010.

In response to your statement:

"We always open CSH in the tri-pane window so that the user gets the help they need but can see it in the context of the whole screen / product."

Does that mean you use the Window Properties (WebHelp) dialog to create and name a new window that acts just like RH's default tri-pane window?

If so, that's what I'm doing, and I used "mimic" as I don't know what RH is doing behind-the-scenes. I'm mimicing RH's default tri-pane window with one of my own.

The end result I'm aiming for is to have help called in 2 ways from 2 different places but look basically the same from a UI perspective:

A general call to help that displays RH's default tri-pane UI and default topic:

RH_ShowHelp(0,'c:/Projects/Generate/DashboardHelp/!SSL!/WebHelp/index.htm', HH_DISPLAY_TOC, 0)

And a CSH call that also displays in a tri-pane UI (in this case I've named it NewWindow1):

RH_ShowHelp(0,'c:/Projects/Generate/DashboardHelp/!SSL!/WebHelp/index.htm>NewWindow1', HH_HELP_CONTEXT, 1000)

I'm guessing that the Window Properties (WebHelp) dialog is really just a user interface to control the default frameset RH uses to display topics in a call of the first type above.

Of course the boss wants me to modify objects that appear in the NewWindow1 but aren't exposed in the Window Properties (WebHelp) dialog, but that's for another post.

Thanks,

Patrick


No. We leave the window properties set to use the browser default settings. Calls are then handled by our developers.

If you are an author rather than a developer, then this is all stuff that they control.

If you are wanting to see how it would work, see Calling WebHelp Using URLs. That describes how in the browser you can call a specific topic using the # method. How that is done from your application is for your developers.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

Follow me @petergrainge

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