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A
Anonymous
March 27, 2008
Question

drop-down hotspot support

  • March 27, 2008
  • 4 replies
  • 1876 views
In WWP we were able to set up drop-down hotspots automatically based on FM paragraph tags. Can we do something like this in RoboHelp, or will we have to edit each topic to achieve this effect?
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4 replies

K
Karzons
Participating Frequently
October 18, 2008
Very interesting writeup thank you.
Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
March 28, 2008
I have no knowledge of FM but maybe this will help.

Is the issue your FM dropdowns are not appearing in RH in the way you want? In the RH project try Format | Styles | Other and defining what you want there.

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A
Anonymous
March 28, 2008
As far as I know, FM does not offer any support for drop-down hot spots as part of its editing and page layout capabilities. With WWP, we were able to introduce them automatically in our CHMs.

For example, if we had an instruction in FM such as:

[step head] To edit the widget settings:
[step] Right click the widget.
[step] On the context menu, click Properties.

WWP would process [step head] to put a +/-- control next to it, and enclose the steps in a drop-down area. (We are using unstructured Frame; the tags in square brackets are just for clarification.)

It would be nice if RoboHelp could create drop-down hotspots automatically in the same way.



J
JainVivek
Inspiring
March 31, 2008
RoboHelp currently does not have an equivalent method for drop down and expanding hotspots. You can however create dynamic HTML effects like mouse over through style definitions.
Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
March 28, 2008
No. Looking in RH you need to see 7.01.001

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A
Anonymous
March 28, 2008
I'm patched, but having investigated the Styles controls (via the "Styles" button on the FrameMaker - RoboHelp Style Mappings dialog box) I think I may be barking up the wrong tree.

In the RH Style controls, there is no option to associate a style with a drop-down hotspot. In a way this is no surprise, because dropdown hotspots are not an effect you can associate with a single paragraph. You need to set up a <div> that defines a dropdown text area. In WWP, if an FM paragraph tag was marked for a dropdown, WWP created the <div> immediately following that paragraph, and ended the <div> according to certain rules.

Reading between the lines, I've come to the conclusion that setting up equivalent conversion behaviour in RH is not possible, and that if I want drop-down hotspots, I'll have to edit each HTML topic to add the javascript and define the <div> (probably using an "add drop-down hot spot" feature in the topic editor). Please correct me if I'm wrong.

J
JainVivek
Inspiring
March 28, 2008
You can map FrameMaker styles to RoboHelp styles. In RoboHelp, you can make DHTML effects as part of RoboHelp styles. Edit the styles in fmstyles.css, map FrameMaker style to RoboHelp style and you will be able to have them appear automatically in RoboHelp. you must have RoboHelp patch 7.0.1 applied for this to work.

Drop Down and Expanding hotspots are implemented using javascripts in RoboHelp and are not handled through style definitions.
A
Anonymous
March 28, 2008
Thanks, I'll give it a try. the Tech Comm Suite demo installed RH 7.00.145 -- does this mean it's already patched?
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