Always on Top

[sick_and_tired]

Good day,

Currently, we have set our Help to "Always Stay On Top" so that users can work within our program while Help is visible. However, we have complaints that when the user switches to another program, e.g. Word, our Help stays on top of that program as well.

Is there any way to have our Help stay on top of our program ONLY, and when another program is launched it either minimizes or goes behind?

Thanks for your help.

[CraigCC]

Hi,

you will need to speak to the application developers to force this kind of behaviour. Pretty sure this is somehting that cannot be done via the RH interface. You can get an small shareware application which allows your users to pin windows to stay on top of all applications. Will dig out the URL and post it later if you are interested?

cheers
Craig

[sick_and_tired]

Thank you for your quick response! My email client wouldn't allow me to reply to your message, so I apologize for using the forum now, but I will take you up on the URL if you have time to dig it up.
Thanks again.

[CraigCC]

Hi,

Here you go - in the meantime stick a pin in one of the developers, they should be able to control this behaviour via the application rather than expecting users to work with freeware - BTW this is freeware so all the freeware caveats apply (e.g. watch out you rarely get something for nothing).

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/deskpins.html

'DeskPins allows you to keep any window on top of others with a few clicks. While many programs offer this as a feature, others do not, and in such cases DeskPins comes handy. In addition, you can also define rules that use the window title (with wildcard support) and can automatically keep any window on top that matches your rules. The `on top` window is marked with a colored pin that can be quickly removed by simply clicking on it, returning the window to its normal state. '

[sick_and_tired]

I pretty much figured this would be our only option. Thanks, again Craig!

[Pete_Lees]

Hi,

If you're delivering help as a CHM file, and your developers are using the standard methods to connect the file to their application, then the solution should be straightforward: they just need to use the HTML Help API exactly as Microsoft has documented it (see here). Provided that the developers specify the "handle" of the application window as the first parameter of their calls to the CHM file, the CHM window will stay on top of the application window but not on top of any other window.

Perhaps they're already doing that, in which case you just need to remove the Always On Top property from the window definition of your CHM.

Pete

[sick_and_tired]

THanks, Pete. I'll pass this on to Dev. I have a feeling our situation will be rectified soon!

[sick_and_tired]

I'm baaaack!

Craig and Pete, thank you for the previous info. It enabled our developers to fix MOST of the "Always on Top" problem. However, with some dialog boxes, the Help continues to stay on top after opening another program, when it shouldn't. Example scenario: 1) Open my software program, on the File menu, open the XYZ window, click add (the Add XYZ dialog box opens) - it is from this dialog box that I open Help. Help's on top which is fine, but when I open Note Pad (or any other program), Help still stays on top.

Is there a way to correct that, so that Help goes behind, or is it that with dialog boxes that are open, we're just out of luck? Thanks so much for any info you have.