HTML Help Viewer toolbar support

[Guest]

When I open any chm file in the MS HTML Help Viewer, I get a toolbar at the top of the page. One of the toolbar options is "Options" which has a drop-down list. Most of the items on the drop-down list do not seem to be supported, such as "Home", "Stop", "Refresh", etc, I'm not even sure what these mean in the context of on-line help. Is this just an artifact of HTML Help Viewer or is there something I need to do in defining the help project or in the generation of the chm file?

Bob Boller

[Captiv8r]

Hi Bob

Within RoboHelp HTML, you may define a "Home" link that will be visited if the user clicks the Home item. In RoboHelp HTML, you expand the Windows pseudo folder and edit the Window properties to define the Home location. If you are using RoboHelp 7, you first click View > Pods > Project set-up. Then you expand the Windows pseudo folder found in the Project pane and double-click the window to get at its properties. Click the Advanced Properties button and enter a URL into the Home field.

What is worth noting here is that clicking the Home link will open any URL that can be reached. Whether it is a page compiled inside the .CHM or it's http://www.Google.com. This is where the Refresh link comes into play. You may need to refresh loading of the page displayed in the Topic pane of the .CHM viewer.

Hopefully this helps... Rick

[Guest]

Rick - Thanks for the info. I'm now on the right track. However, I want the Home button to open one of the HTML files that is compiled into the chm. From the Microsoft documentation, it seems like "file:///path/myfile.chm::/path/mytopic.htm" ought to work, but it doesn't. Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance,

Bob

[Guest · Accepted solution]

Well, thanks to some more Google searches, I now have the answer. The following works: "ms-its:path\MyFile.chm::/path/MyTopic.htm". The magic here is the "ms-its" prefix. I didn't spend enough time in the searches to find out exactly what this is, but it apparently has something to do with security.

Bob

[Captiv8r]

Hi Bob

Sorry I didn't see this sooner. I was conducting a Captivate class today.

While the code may well work for you, You are changing the spark plugs via the tailpipe, my friend. Linking to a topic inside the .CHM is simple. All you need is the TopicName.HTM (assuming the topic exists in the root level) If the topic is in a folder, you type FolderName/TopicName.HTM.

Cheers... Rick

[johnmccallum]

Bob,

The "ms-its:" is a protocol for opening topics that have been compiled in a .chm. This protocol is designed to be used from outside of the .chm. Similar to the http: protocol used to open pages over the internet. Due to recent security restrictions, the ms-its: protocol is not as useful as it used to be.

John

[AcolinFlood]

"Changing the spark plugs via the tailpipe" sounds you are describing a common heart attack prevention procedure: snaking a catheter up the primary artery to install a stent! Surely, the procedure is simplier than that. 😉

[Pete_Lees]

Here's a Microsoft Knowledge Base article on the ms-its and related protocols:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=235226

Pete

[johnmccallum]

Pete,

Thanks for the link. It is curious that Microsoft "strongly discourages" what RoboHelp automatically uses for merged help. They don't say why though. Makes one wonder if they might break all of our help files if they ever get around to releasing a new HTMLHelp standard.

John

[Pete_Lees]

John,

That's an old article and, now that I look at it more carefully, I can see that it's been overtaken by more recent HTML Help developments. The later versions of HTML Help seem quite comfortable with the "super-automagic" URL in most (all?) contexts.

Pete