Methods for sending Online Help URL/Link to users

[acquaformosa]

Like a lot of people (and due to frames), when I send a URL to a user that points to a specific topic, I will:

• Right-click the main content screen and select Properties.
• Copy the URL details on to my clipboard.
• Paste into an email note (if communicating via email)

The problem with my AIR-compiled WebHelp is that the TOC disappears unless I append a hash/number sign to the front portion of the topic filename (e.g. #topic.htm) up in the address bar of the browser.

My question:

Because I'm getting complaints from the support group about these extra manual steps that only take a few seconds to do, is there another more elegant (and quicker) way to do this that I'm unaware of?  I was even thinking of adding some sort of link on every page (in the header maybe) that says "Send this link . . ." but don't know how to autopopulate the complete URL path with the "#" since it would only seem to eliminate part of the "problem" (not necessarily a problem to me, of course).

Cheers,

[Willam van Weelden]

Hi,

I've had the exact same problem and I created a small script that returns the full CSH url of a topic in WebHelp and Browser Based AIR help. See http://www.wvanweelden.eu/robohelp/get_csh_url_in_output for the script.

You can add a link to a header or footer to send/popup the url. Example: <a href="javascript:alert('URL of topic: '+CSHURL())">URL of this topic</a>

Greet,

Willam

[acquaformosa]

This looks promising, William.

Regarding the code on your website, do I insert that snippet anywhere in particular? 

For example, I assume I'm putting it into the Master Page of my project. I realize the link in this thread does into a Header or Footer, but the larger piece of code?  In the body? Before the body tag(s)?

Initially, I just placed this one line of code into the header of my Master Page, but a mouse click doesn't do anything so I assume I need the rest of the bits from the larger snippet?

[acquaformosa]

I'm afraid I get errors ("Object expected"/Line: 1/Char: 1/Code: 0) so maybe this won't work for me.

[acquaformosa]

I think I got it to work. 

It's most ideal in FireFox cause I can tell them to just drag the cursor and copy the URL text. However, in IE, there's no elegant way to get the path onto one's clipboard, that I can see.  Haven't tried Chrome yet.

[Willam van Weelden]

Hi,

Yes, you need the code from the snippet. Just put it in the header, but you've already figured that out I guess.

Unfortunately, IE doesn't like you to copy pasting from an alert, as does Chrome the last time I checked. To present the URL to a user, you can create an e-mail to the user, print the code in your topic, copy the code to the clipboard (IE), or do something else. How you want to do it is up to you.

Greet,

Willam