Hiding Topics from a Basic Search

[tripwire45]

My predecessor handled screen captures in an unusual way (at least to me). Rather than displaying them in the body of a topic, she'd insert a graphic of a button called "screen" button. If someone reading a topic wanted to see the screen capture the text was referencing, they could click on the screen button and be taken to the image. What is interesting, is that the actual screen capture they are taken to via the hyperlink is displayed on a separate topic page rather than having the hyperlink take the reader to the actual image file.

Since this seemed to be the convention for how screen captures are managed, I started doing the same thing. I recently conferenced with someone in our QA department and she told me that the screen capture topics are being returned in basic search results (which makes sense). She would like these specific pages not to be returned in search results. Is there any way to hide specific topics from a basic search? I've looked in the RoboHelp help files and couldn't find any information. If I have to completely retool how graphics are handled in these projects, it will represent hundreds of hours of labor.

I'm using RoboHelp 5 and working in HTMLHelp (CHM). Thanks.

-Trip

[Captiv8r · Accepted solution]

Hi Trip

I could see a couple of possible approaches.

1. Remove all the topics that are linked, and directly insert the images within the topic. Just tuck them away in DHTML Drop-downs. This way they will be hidden until the user clicks the drop down link.

2. You could go behind RoboHelp's back and rename all the topics with the images from .HTM extension to .XHTM. At this point, RoboHelp won't see them and will consider them to be broken links. You would then return to RoboHelp and carefully add each new .XHTM topic to your list of Baggage Files. Then you would amend all the links to point at the new topics. After that, recompile/regenerate and you should be set.

Cheers... Rick

[tripwire45]

Thanks for getting back to me, Rick. Let me have a go at each of your suggestions on my test project and see which one is a better fit. There are quite a number of "image topic" pages to go through so either way you slice it, it'll be a bit of a chore. I'll let you know what I finally go with.

-Trip

[tripwire45]

I decided to go with using DHTML drop downs to display the screen captures. I can keep the "screen buttons" in the topics so that when readers want to view a screen, they can just click the button and the screen capture will appear. I'll just delete the old screen topic pages after I test and make sure my changes work.

Thanks again.

-Trip

[Chet Zeshonski]

There's another way to do this:

1. Move all the screen capture topics to a new (secondary) project.
2. Create a new CHM file from the secondary project.
3. In your primary project, open each link to a screen capture image. In each case, the Hyperlink dialog will appear.
4. Open the Link to drop-down menu, and then select Remote Topic.
5. Navigate to the secondary CHM file.
6. Select the desired topic from the secondary CHM file.
7. When you are finished, generate a new CHM file from your primary project. The secondary topics will not appear in your search results.

I found this in the RH Help files or the Knowledge Base; I don't remember which. Also, if you don't want to repeat these steps for each link, you can edit one link, copy the code from the TrueCode pane, and use a find-and-replace feature to replace the old code with the new target. That should cut down the time tremendously.

(FWIW, I use drop-down hotspots when I show such captures at all.)