Library tutorials & articles

Creating HTML Help

By James Crowley, published on 14 Jul 2001
Page 10 of 12
  1. HTML Help
  2. What is HTML Help?
  3. The Project File (1)
  4. The Project File (2)
  5. HTML Files
  6. Contents Files
  7. Index Files
  8. Mapping Topics to Ids
  9. Using Images
  10. Using stylesheets
  11. Displaying help from a MsgBox
  12. Displaying help

Using stylesheets

Programmers who already know HTML, and use style sheets can skip this section, as it is exactly the same.

In order to ensure that all your documents are of the same style (ie all the headers are the same size and colour), you can use stylesheets. First, you need to create a stylesheet:

1) Open Notepad, and enter the text below

h1 {color:blue;font-size: 12pt;}
p {font-family: 'Tahoma';font-size: 10pt;}

2) Save the file as default.css in your html directory.

Then, enter the following html into all of your html pages. This will link the html document to the stylesheet. It is therefore a good idea to do this before you have written them all!

<link rel="STYLESHEET" HREF="default.css" TYPE="text/css">

Now, you can have a play around with the stylesheet text. First, lets look at the text we have already entered:

; the first bit: 'h1 {' means that the braces {} contain style information for all text contained in h1 tags.
; the second bit: 'color:blue;' sets the colour of h1 tags to blue
; the third bit: 'font-size: 12pt' sets the font size to 12pts
h1 {color:blue;font-size: 12pt;}

So, what's these h1 tags then, I here you ask. Well, instead of surrounding your text by p (p for paragraph) tags, like this:

<p>Hello!</p>

you use h1 tags, like this:

<h1>Hello!</h1>

It's as simple as that! In a stylesheet, you can also specify styles for:

Tag Description
h1 Header 1
h2 Header 2
h3......h6 and all headers to Header 6
p Paragraph text (the main body of your text) 
a Hyperlinks

Each 

And, inside the braces, you can use the following styles:

Style 'descriptors' Description
color Font Color
font-face Font Name (you need to contain these with a ' each side:
font-face:'Tahoma';
font-size font size. Put a pt after the value:
font-size: 10pt;
text-decoration Set to text-decoration: none; for no underline, and text-decoration: underline; for underlined text
font-weight Set to font-weight: normal; for regular, and font-weight: bold; for bold text

For more information, click Help Topics on the Help menu, and enter Cascading Style Sheets, and click HTML Tag Reference, and open the CSS book in the contents pane.

Any queries, or if you have a better way to describe this, please contact me.

Comments

  1. Premchand Peddakotla
    10 Mar 2008 at 05:33

    hi,

    i sent u how retrive the file

    if you want how to create and the rest of the process, pls give some time

    bye

     

  2. Premchand Peddakotla
    10 Mar 2008 at 05:31

    HI, i found this is the one of of the way we can creat and its very simple;

     

    System.Diagnostics.Process process = new System.Diagnostics.Process();process.StartInfo.FileName = System.AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory + "Urfile.chm";

    process.Start();

    This will work definitely.

    BYE

     

     

  3. Louis Mangini
    29 Sep 2006 at 19:21

    Hi.  I went through your tutorial on creating HTML Help, but keep running into a very basic problem.  After compiling the help file for the first time and opening up the chm file, my home.htm file does not display at all in the right window.  I get the help file window (with the HIDE, BACK, FORWARD, etc. displayed, but the window on the right is blank.  I followed your tutorial step by step, saved the html files in the directories as indicated, etc.  What am I doing wrong?  I receive no error messages or security warnings.  Thanks in advance!

  4. Nilesh Gambhava
    13 Jul 2006 at 13:51

    Can you give me any detail or any url where I can find about how to create chm files programmatically using C#??

    Thanks in Advance

    Nilesh Gambhava

  5. femi olufadi
    12 Jul 2005 at 14:26

    i have tried to make popup in html help but coudn't. can somebody help.

  6. StarsInTheSky
    08 May 2004 at 12:28

    I have kinda the same problem. Showing a topic works for me if the pages are within the chm file, however, if a topic is on a web site,
    even though I can retrieve them by ciking on them, with the HtmlHelp function, both using HHDISPLAYTOPIC and HHHELPCONTEXT..
    the help viewer jumps to the topic, but fails retrieving the page on the content pane. It does seem to synchronize, it doesn shange the content pane, but to a bad page, like it wants it to be within it.. or I don't really know. So please please, someone help me! you know what to do? have seen this?

  7. Jordan Fontaine
    10 Jan 2004 at 15:09
    Figured out my problem, because I was frustrated I started changing things needlessly (I know not a good programming troubleshooting technique ) and realized that it is not suppost to be HH_DISPLAY_TOPIC but that it should be HH_HELP_CONTEXT and everything worked just fine.
  8. Jordan Fontaine
    24 Dec 2003 at 00:11

    Hi, I read your entire article and it really helped a lot but I can't wrap up what I've made because for some reason the help file just won't show.

    Code:

    Private Sub mnuHelpHowto_Click()
     HTMLShowTopic 1030
    End Sub


    ...


    Public Sub HTMLShowTopic(lngTopicID As Long)


     ' Force the Help window to load a specific topic.
     ' The Help window will synchronize the
     ' Contents display automatically
     htmlhelp hwnd, App.helpfile & ">Main", HHDISPLAYTOPIC, lngTopicID


    End Sub



    I don't quite understand why it will not show the help file, my comp appears to be processing something but in the end it does not show the help file.  If I specify 0 as the lngTopicID it does show the window but at the default topic, not the topic I want it to show.  FYI I have mapped the numbers to a file using the notepad trick.

  9. Damian Parker
    06 May 2003 at 08:15

    Great I can use this now I understand it!
    Well Done!


  10. scheesbrough
    23 Mar 2003 at 20:58

    I followed the article and it fixed many of my problems but ...
    I'm having problems displaying popup text with textboxes.


    'No help ID matches control ID #...


    Iv'e tested the popup text files outside the app and they're find. My code works with command buttons (only?).


    Any ideas??

  11. svfrndz
    08 Jan 2003 at 02:30

    Excellent topic! this is very helpful, thanks a lot. It has been a great jumpstart for integrating html help file in VB. Hope you can include topics on popups.

  12. Mark Harrington
    23 Nov 2002 at 15:54

    Absolutley brilliant. Very informative easy to understand and a great enjoyment to read please keep up the good work  

  13. Steve Rayner
    31 Aug 2002 at 08:02

    Yes i do still have this problem.


    Thankyou for your responce, unfortunatly i still cannot resolve my problem.


    I have looked through some of the links you posted and i will look at the others in more detail when i have more time.


    Thanks again.

  14. Pete Lees
    29 Aug 2002 at 21:02

    Stevesoft,


    In the unlikely event that you're still struggling with this problem...


    > I have followed this tutorial and have the following problem:
    >
    > The code for displaying the contents or the index only works after i
    > have pressed F1 to display help.
    >
    > Once i have done this once, the code works fine...... why is this?


    The following are the principal documents on connecting HTML Help to an application. Maybe these will help.


    http://www.smountain.com/mProgrammingHelp.htm (VB, C++)
    http://www.mvps.org/htmlhelpcenter/mapping.htm
    http://www.mvps.org/htmlhelpcenter/whcomplete.htm (VB)
    http://www.workwrite.com/helpthink/vb    liske.htm (VB)
    http://helpware.net/delphi/index.html (Delphi)
    http://www.workwrite.com/helpthink/delphi_chandler.htm (Delphi)


    Pete

  15. Pete Lees
    29 Aug 2002 at 20:55

    rollershade,


    Just came across your message. Here's a very belated follow-up, in the unlikely event you still need this information.


    > the ordinal 373 could not be located in the dynamic link library HHA.dll


    Make sure that all the HTML Help runtime DLLs are properly installed and registered, using either:


    HTML Help DLL Registrar (http://www.helpfulsolutions.com/)
    MJ's Help Diagnostics (http://helpware.net/downloads/index.htm)


    > the link u gave for the microsoft page cant be found


    This was changed a little while ago to http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/htmlhelp/html/vsconHH1Start.asp.


    Pete

  16. Colin Harman MACITP
    14 Jul 2002 at 16:33

    i have installed it from the vb6 cd , but i try and run the html workshop, and i get this error


    the ordinal 373 could not be located in the dynamic link library HHA.dll


    any ideas, and the link u gave for the microsoft page cant be found

  17. Steve Rayner
    07 Jul 2002 at 12:36
    I have followed this tutorial and have the following problem:

    The code for displaying the contents or the index only works after i have pressed F1 to display help.

    Once i have done this once, the code works fine...... why is this?

    Stevesoft
  18. Developer Fusion Bot
    01 Jan 1999 at 00:00

    This thread is for discussions of Creating HTML Help.

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James Crowley James first started this website when learning Visual Basic back in 1999 whilst studying his GCSEs. The site grew steadily over the years while being run as a hobby - to a regular monthly audience ...
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