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My customer has developed a web application that consists of a series of pages of forms. The web application can be accessed via laptops or smart devices (browser-based).
Next to each form field, they want to embed context-sensitive help buttons (shown in the example below as question marks). The customer has specifically requested that, when the user clicks a help button, they don't want the user brought to a new tab in order to read the help topic. They either want the help topic to appear as a floating window on top of the existing tab, or somehow embed the help topic within the existing tab. Are either of these possible?
To visually show you what I'm looking for, I made an example shown below. When the user clicked the help button next to the Comments field, a floating RoboHelp help window appears in front of the form. The user would then read the info in the window, and then close it (thus returning to the form).
Again, is this possible in RoboHelp? If so, how? The biggest issue (in my opinion), is that smart device browsers (such as Safari) don't seem to have floating windows or tabs.
Any opinions on this would be most appreciated!
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There are two ways in which you can accomplish this, both by using Context Sensitive Help:
The question is what type of output you are planning on creating. For WebHelp, you will need to create a Window definitionin RoboHelp and use that in your help call as well.
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LOL, Willam, I was hoping you might pop in on this one.
What seems to remain unanswered here is whether a smart phone or a tablet will actually support a pop up window as they are talking about. Because I'm not in that space, I have no clue and it would be nice to know.
Thanks... Rick
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Mobile devices will open a new tab. Not much to do about that. But it will work for desktop as the screen shot suggests.
For targeting mobile and tablets, it would be better to load the content in an iframe and load that within the page itself. (If you want it embedded.)
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Thanks for your help, William!
BTW, I am looking to output in responsive HTML5.
Your last comment intrigued me the most. I never considered iframes. Can I embed the entire responsive HTML5 help system within an iframe? If so, I could toss the idea of having pop-ups, and simply display the help system within a frame in the current browser tab. This, it seems, would satisfy both mobile and desktop browsers. (Or can I only display a single .htm help file within an frame?)
If this is possible, is it also possible to close the frame if the user wanted to hide it?
David
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To be clear, when I say "embed the entire responsive HTML5 help system within an iframe," I am suggesting something that looks kind of like the following (the web application resides in the green-highlighted section, and the help system resides in the red-highlighted section):
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That is possible. But it will, of course, require changed in your application. Simply put: RoboHelp does nothing but being loaded in the iFrame. Any intelligence you want for the iframe such as closing or resizing, will have to be added to your application.