Custom Buttons in WebHelp Skin

[darkagn]

Hi all,

I am trying to add a button to my WebHelp version of my project to enable readers to print the current topic. In my skin editor, I managed to add a custom button, Print, with an image entered window.print() in the JavaScript onClick field that is provided (this is a standard JS call that prints the window). After updating the view in the Skin Editor, the button is displayed, but after re-generating the WebHelp layout, I can't see my new button. I thought maybe the Advanced tab's Dependancies list might have something to do with it, but I am not sure what it is for exactly. Is there a trick to adding custom buttons to skins to get them to display in the generated format?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts,
darkagn

[Captiv8r]

Hi there darkagn

When you click File > Generate Primary Layout, you see the first of a few different screens that allow you to choose different generation options. Click the Next > button and you should see a screen that allows you to pick and choose the buttons that will be placed in the Main Toolbar. You probably just need to enable your button as RoboHelp doesn't do that for you automatically when you add one in the Skins Editor.

Cheers... Rick

[darkagn]

Hi Captiv8r and thankyou for the super-fast response :)

Your reply allowed me to add the custom button to my skin.

However, the window.print() function only prints the area with the buttons, not the topic itself. So I thought I'd re-post and explain how I actually solved the problem of printing topics in WebHelp in case anyone else needed the same info.

I ended up adding a button to the template that all of my topics are derived from, in the footer so that the button remained below the topic itself. I had to add the button in the HTML editor with the following code:

<form style="text-align: right; padding-right: 10px;">
<input id=printbutton type=button onClick="window.print()" value="Print Topic" style="width: 90px;">
</form>

Now, because the Print button appears in the same area of the screen as the topic itself, the call to window.print() prints everything in that frame (which unfortunately includes the button itself, but this is a small price to pay to be able to print topics from WebHelp).

Anyway, I hope this solution helps someone out there...

[Peter Grainge]

In one of the customising webhelp topics on my site there is a method of adding a button to the toolbar that prints the topic without the user having had to click the topic first.

[Tom.H]

Hi,

I would like to be able to put a print button on my main toolbar, too, but despite digging around on your site for some time, I have been unable to locate the topic you refer to. Could you be more specific as to the location of this information?

Thanks,

Tom

[Peter Grainge]

See Snippet 24.

There is also something in http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/showhide/showhide_method1.htm
Scroll down to Print As Displayed - Blue Print icon but I think the Snippet is what you want.