Any way for the users of help to view several topics in one frame?

[kdeuler]

Hi. I'm experimeting with RoboHelp (trial copy). One prospective user is asking if it is possible to view several consecutive topics in one scrollable view.  For example, if the user were to click on a topic, (and then invoke some type of view-all option) , all subtopics would appear in the frame, one after the other, perhaps with text indented according to the hierarchy in the TOC. This user's interest is to be able to read an entire document (ie, topic with subtopics) without the need to keep clicking in the nav area to expose each subsequent topic's text. Could someone comment as to whether this is possible to set up?

We've been using FrameMaker to make PDFs up til now. PDFs are of course fine for allowing a reader to read consecutive topics in by simply scrolling through the PDF. We're considering moving to Help-based manuals to make it easier to find stuff (via search) across all FM books we import into the RH project.

There's the idea of course of having the best of both worlds by setting up links to FM files in RH, thereby preserving the best of both wordls (linear PDFs AND searchable topics). But this seems like another production task to continue to worry about (namely PDF generation).

Any ideas would be helpful.

Thanks!

-Kurt

[Willam_van_Weelden]

There is no way in RoboHelp to do this. At least not in the way you

describe.

I have seen projects where every FM file is just one enourmous topic,

and then you will have all content on the same page. Using bookmarks you

can then jump to relevant sections. I would not recommend this solution.

It makes very long topics and it makes it almost impossible to find the

relevant information. Short, concise topics are best for online.

You can use browse sequences and links in topics to allow readers to

quickly go to relevant information. This might not be exactly what you

asked, but it is very usable and much more user friendly then extremely

long topics.

Kind regards,

Willam

[kdeuler]

Thanks Willam. One thing: the Enable Browse Sequence option is grayed out in the WebHelp config. Is there a way to enalbe this for WebHelp?

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

Have you actually defined a Browse Sequence via Tools > Browse Sequence Editor?

Assuming the answer is no, you need to first define one. Then, there are actually TWO places you need to enable the sequence(s). Both are in the SSL properties. One is in the Navigation section while the other is in the Content Category section.

Cheers... Rick

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Depending on your help output, you can always right-click and open new topics in separate tabs to achieve sort of what you’re asking. I do this in one of my AIRHelp projects to send people off on a separate browse sequence and then tell them to come back to the fork in the trail to continue.