Creating HTML Help

The Project File (2)

First, we need to create a window that will display our help file. Click the Add/Modify Window Definitions button . Enter Main into the dialog that is displayed, and click OK. Then the window below is displayed.

 

BUG 2
If you have Version 1.1, you cannot remove a window by pressing the Remove button! You get a wonderful message informing you that 'This functionality has not yet been implemented'. To get around this, save and close the project. Then open the file in notepad, and delete the appropriate line under the [Windows] section.

The Window type is the name of the Window you have just created. Set the Title bar text to something like Notepad Help. Next, click the Buttons tab.

The buttons specified correspond to the buttons displayed across the top of the compiled Help file in the toolbar:

These buttons can be defined as follows:

  • Hide - Hides the navigation Pane.  When the pane is hidden, this becomes the Show button.

  • Back - Move to the previously-viewed topic in this session.

  • Forward - If Back has been used, moves to the next-viewed topic in this session.

  • Stop - Stops the loading of any topic or web page in the viewer.

  • Refresh - Refreshes the current page from the source.

  • Home - Go to the page specified in the definition.

  • Print - Prints the current page.

  • Options - Presents the user with a menu of the other buttons.

  • Jump 1 - User-defined button.

  • Jump 2 - User-defined button.

Select the options you want. Next, click the Position tab. This allows you to specify the size and location of the help window. You can use the Autosizer to manually adjust where the window starts. For the tri-pane window, I normally set the width property to 640, and the height property to 440, making it slightly smaller than the standard 640 x 480 resolution, so the people with that setting don't experience problems. The Left and Top settings are at 0 so that the window is displayed in the corner of the screen.  

The Files tab allows you to specify the files you will use in your project:

  • TOC - File containing the entries for the Contents tab (HHC extension).

  • Index - File containing the entries for the Index tab (HHK extension).

  • Default - The topic to be displayed when the window first opens (HTML extension).

  • Home - The topic HTMLHelp displays when the Home button is clicked (HTML extension).

  • Jump 1 - The topic HTMLHelp displays when the Jump 1 button is clicked.

  • Jump 2 - The topic HTMLHelp displays when the Jump 2 button is clicked.

Don't worry about any of these at the moment, we will specify them later. Finally the Navigation Pane:

This tab allows you to specify what tabs are shown in the help window, and if it is a tri-pane (ie with Toolbar, nav pane and topic pane). Check the Window with navigation pane box, and ensure that Table of contents is selected in the Default tab frame. This specifies that the Table of contents will be the tab that is selected when the window is first displayed. 

Also check the Auto sync check box. This ensures that when the window is displayed, the Table of contents is displaying the current topic. You can also check the Add Search Tab check box, as this will allow your users to search your HTML Help File. Note that if you check this box, you need to check the Compile Full Text search in the Options Dialog (see below). If you wish, you can specify the Navigation pane width too.

Now you need to specify some project options. Click the Project Properties icon . The following dialog will be displayed. 

Set the title to "Test HTML Project" , and set the Default Window as Main (the window you just created). If you checked the Add Search Tab option in the Window Properties dialog, then click Compiler, and select the 'Compile Full Text search information' check box.

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James Crowley

James Crowley United Kingdom

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 audien...

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