Automatically expanding all drop-down and expanding text in a project.

[MackDuff]

I am using RH8. The project I am working on has a lot of drop-down text and expanding text.  I was wondering if there was an easy way to auto-expand all the text within the project.

Any information on how I might be able to do this without manually doing it would be much appreciated.

[Willam_van_Weelden]

Hi,

What exactly do you want? Do you want a button to allow users to show/hide all dropdowns on a page? Do you want to delete all dropdowns from your source files? Do you want dropdowns to allways print? Do you want all dropdowns to be open when a page loads?

Also, do you use twisties for dropdowns. If so, which method do you use? The standard RoboHelp method of a custom method (see http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/twisty/twisty.htm)

Greet,

Willam

[MackDuff]

Basically I would like to have the drop-down open by default when a page loads.

The drop-down/expand links have been created using the 'Create expanding hotspot and text' and 'Create drop-down hotspot and text' from the DHTML menu in RH.

We are trying to generate a quick PDF from the output .chm file, but all the drop-down and expanded text does not appear in the PDF, which is problematic. I was thinking if we could auto-expand all the text by default, it will convert properly.

Thanks,

Mack

[Willam_van_Weelden]

Hi,

That will probably work, but it kind of defeats the purpose of having a dropdowns.

Why do you create a PDF from the CHM? Perhaps it's possible to generate the PDF from RH. You don't need to modify everything.

A second option is to allways show dropdowns in your print output. I don't use CHM's much, but if you create a pdf, you probably use the print option. In that case, you may want to control the dropdowns using css. This has double benefits: no coding for you and whenever a user prints a page, they allways print the dropdowns. To do this, add @media print {div.droptext { display: block !important; } } to your style sheet.

If you really want all dropdowns opened by default, your best bet is to have a script on every page that opens all dropdowns when the page is opened. This might be a lot of work, as you will need to add the script to every topic (or sneak it in by misusing the header/footer of the masterpage).

Greet,

Willam

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

I totally agree with Willam here. Don't create the PDF from the CHM. By taking that approach you will likely encounter a generic issue with printing from CHM files. The style sheet gets lost and you have to code some special JavaScript to make it work. So you are better off using the Printed Documentation feature of RoboHelp to take the project you created the CHM from and create Printed Documentation from it. Then PDF the Word document.

I do see where it might have some merit to ask the development team to build in a mechanism that allows us as RoboHelp authors to pick and choose whether a DHTML drop-down is collapsed or expanded when a page loads. So please consider submitting a Wish Form to ask for that ability. (link to the Wish Form is in my sig)

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7 or 8 moments from now - $24.95! Adobe Certified RoboHelp HTML Training SorcererStone Blog RoboHelp eBooks

[MackDuff]

Thanks for the info guys.

I know creating a PDF from the .chm is not an ideal solution at all. Our company decided a few years ago to drop the PDF versions of our user guides, so the doc team (this was before my time) ditched using Framemaker and went exclusively with RH. Now our customers are complaining that there are no PDFs and people within the company are asking if we can generate some kind of PDF again.

We have a huge help file and we tried generating a PDF using RH and it was painful, time-consuming, content was missing, and it didn't look great.

This is definitely not something we would want to do for every release. The chm2PDF conversion tool worked really well actually, except for the drop down and expanded text links.  I was hoping that there would be an easy way to get around this. I guess not 😞

Thanks again for your help.

M

[Captiv8r]

Hey Willam

Do you by chance have a CSS file you would be willing to share where basic UL and OL are configured so they look reasonably consistent between the major browsers?

Feel free to reply off list at rstone75 (at) kc (dot) rr (dot) com.

Thanks... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7 or 8 moments from now - $24.95! Adobe Certified RoboHelp HTML Training SorcererStone Blog RoboHelp eBooks

[Guest]

Hi all,

I read the link http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/twisty/twisty.htm

It's very useful. but I'm using RH9, whether I can use any script in the link to create dropdown text with arrow image before it.

Thanks.

[Peter Grainge]

This thread is about automatically expanding dropdowns. Your question is whether dropdown text can have images. Two different things.

The page on my site tells covers having images before the dropdown. http://www.wvanweelden.eu has a script to automatically open the dropdowns.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Guest]

Dear Peter,

I mean I am using RH 9 and I want to add image before the dropdown. So can I use instruction in the link http://www.grainge.org/pages/various_rh_projects/rh_twisty1/index.htm ?

[Peter Grainge]

Yes but why use that method? On the http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/twisty/twisty.htm page I recommend using a later method unless you already have twisties set up using the older method, which clearly you do not.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge