Good morning ladies and gents, it's me again, promising another highly annoying question (sorry)...
First off, sorry for all the censoring on the images, I simply have to, I have no choice. TO BUSINESS!
So since Willam van Weelden​ and PeterGrainge​, among others (excuse me please if I forget someone) helped me to get custom TOC icons again in my landing page using the Indigo layout after Update 2, my documentation has really taken off. People are impressed and everybody loves it. It looks brilliant, and I'm really happy it turned out so well.
However, I now have a new idea, and I would like to build on this idea of mine, if you would be so kind as to give it a read. Our product is to be sold as a suite, comprising of 3 different sections: A design studio, a customer portal and an online marketplace/app store. Each one of these three "sections" will end up having it's own documentation, and I would like to connect them somehow. This is what I have in mind:
A landing page with 4 custom TOC images, looking something like this (ignore the images for now, they're just what I had lying around):
Now here is where I wonder if what I want will be possible. When I click on any of the icons I want to open up the design studio's own custom icons, like so:
And the same for the other three icons as well. Now I know this is probably not an existing feature for the layout, but I was wondering if the following could work:
1. Create a separate project for each of the main screen's icons, in other words a new project for Getting Started, another for Design Studio, another for Customer Portal and the same for App Store.
2. Set up "hyperlinks" on the main screen icons to navigate to the published HTML5 layout for each of the projects' index.html files.
Now, this is what I have an issue with - I can't seem to link the icon or book to a different HTML file. I have also tried to set up a permanent redirect on the page to redirect to a different URL for now, but it's not working like it should (I use a JS command on page load). I was just wondering if someone could help me to redirect to the correct file, or if someone has a better idea for me?
1 Correct answer
OK so a friend of mine came along, and helped me with this. I managed to get it working, and it's amazing. I can now basically go infinite levels deep, all with custom TOC icons with a simple script. I'll share it here:
<script type="text/javascript">
function redirPage() {
window.parent.location="../../../RelURLOfYourOtherProjectFiles/index.htm";
}
window.onload = redirPage;
</script>
This works fine, and when the page loads it redirects to the other project's index.htm which contains the published
...
37
Replies
Check that works in all browsers, Firefox in particular. It looks like a method I used some years back that failed in merged help after a Firefox update.
There is another method on my site under Add a Redirect in Merged WebHelp and HTML5 Help
You are right about adding a redirect message for anyone whose load is slow but in practice most users should not see it.
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It's in Step 5 under Add the Redirect. Merged WebHelp and HTML5 Help
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Hold up. What you seemed to be describing early was not truly a merge. It was more a project with links to other projects.
What's the difference? In a merge, the TOC, Index and Search work across all the projects as one. What you seem to be describing is a just a front end to three self contained projects. Not the same thing.
Looking at why you want this setup, a merge would seem ideal. Is it the intention that all customers will have the same help or do you want to deliver a "front page" that just links to the components that customer has?
If it is the latter, you can have multiple merges that cater for each combination a customer may have.
First get your mind around a standard merge using my demo. It is basic to make understanding the logic easier, quicker and safer than working with live projects.
When you have done that it gets a bit more complex but just take it step by step and you will be fine. With WebHelp merging was much easier because you generated the parent and children once and then delivered to the developers. They installed the parent and whichever children they wanted a customer to have. The merge knew some children were missing in some scenarios and took care of things. That same simplicity has not carried through to responsive help, you have to have a parent for every scenario and generate that to a unique folder for each combination.
When you have got your mind around the basic merge, come back here and the rest will begin to make some sense.
In the parent you create a TOC for each combo.
You also duplicate the outputs so that there is one for each TOC and each generates to a unique Generate folder for that combo.
That is much cleaner than remembering to change the TOC and folder each time.
In the child projects you do the same but here you only need an output if that child is part of it.
Thus in Parent you have TOC 1, TOC 2, TOC 3 and so with different combos of children. You have outputs generating to Generate 1, Generate 2, Generate 3 and so on.
Let's assume Child 1 goes to everyone and some customers will have Child 2 as well. Some of the Child 2 customers will also have Child 3. The combos are thus Child 1 alone, Child 1 and 2 but not Child 3, Child 1, Child 2 and Child 3.
In Child 1 you will want an output for each Generate folder as all customers get that.
In Child 2 you will want an output for Generate 2 and Generate 3. Child 1 will already be there and this will add Child 2.
In Child 3 you will want an output for just that child pointing to Generate 3. Children 1 and 2 will already be there and this will add Child 3.
It may sound complex right now but once you run through it, you will find it is quite logical.
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@toxxyc Working on another feature in a merge reminded me that all the projects need to have the same skin. I'm thinking that is why your method works as it is not a proper merge, each project is working standalone.
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What you see in the merged TOC depends on how you set things up.
If you put all the books in a child below one book, you will get what I think you want. When you open the TOC in the project you want to see just one book with everything nested there.
When you open a child on its own, look at the TOC. What you see there is what you get in the merge so if you only want to see a book for that child, that's what you need to set up in the child.
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OK I've tried now, and it seems like RoboHelp uses the custom icons like it is supposed to, but instead of allocating those icons to the TOC books in the child TOCs, it assigns the first icon in the custom icon list to the Back button and ignores the rest. Is there a way I can ignore or remove the Back button from the icons list?
Here's some screenshots of what it does (ignore the ugly colours and names, this is me playing around first):
Parent index.htm as published, showing the two child projects, Studio and Portal:
And when opening a child project, for instance the Portal_Collection book (single main book containing all the other books in the Portal project):
So if I can remove or disable the Back button (as you can see it contains my custom icon), I think I'm on the money. The "home_page" shortcut and logo way at the top works exactly like it should - clicking it while reading a topic takes me waaaaay back to the parent topic, which shows the icons correctly.
There is no way of removing it through the RoboHelp UI. It would mean playing with the layout.css and that is not something I would recommend, especially in a merged scenario.
See www.grainge.org for free RoboHelp and Authoring information.
If you search for Brackets Download, that can change the CSS to many lines but you are on you're own with that and the file.
Indigo Basic Settings allows you to create up to two custom links topic right.
See www.grainge.org for free RoboHelp and Authoring information.
Welcome to the world of responsive layouts. Yes they are complex and the idea is that RoboHelp gives you some layouts and some customisation options but if you want to step out of that, you need serious levels of HTML5 and CSS3 knowledge, really at professional website designer level.
The rest of RoboHelp is much easier to deal with. Responsive layouts not so easy.
Have you tried compiling without the link on the parent page? Worth a try.
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