RoboHelp X5 : Scrolling/Non-scrolling regions

Report · May 01, 2008

Hi, It's Miss backwards thinking here :o),

After a search I found some posts about creating non-scrolling regions. However, what I would like to do is create a scrolling region inside a topic. I want to insert a graphic at top of topic, then have a region below that scolls so you can see the graphic but read the text underneath.

Either way; scrolling region or non-scrolling region, when using frames it appears that the graphic and the accompanying text have to be separate topics. I don't want to do this as my project would end up being a nightmare!

Can anyone suggest an alternative solution, or suggest how I can use frames in a better way that what my limited knowledge of them allows? Is there a feature in RH7 that allows you to do this, and therefore it's worth upgrading?

Thanks so much for your ideas.

L ;o))

Report · May 01, 2008

Hi, L,

You can also do this using DHTML. See the HelpTips file available from the following page for examples:

http://www.simon-jones.org.uk/help.htm

Pete

Report · May 01, 2008

Thanks for the link Pete.
I've downloaded the help tips file and will give it a go.

Ta ra,

L :o))

Report · May 02, 2008

Hi,

Unfortunately we cannot get this to work. We followed the instructions for method 2 as that seemed to be the solution we wanted. Now, we have now a completely non-scolling help topic. However, we can highlight and drag the cursor down to the bottom of the page.

Do you have any ideas what we did wrong (although we have gone through the instructions repeatedly and got the same result each time)?
Is this method suitable for RoboHelp X5?
Does anyone have any other ideas to achieve the result I want?

Thanks for all your help

L :ol

Report · May 02, 2008

Try this one. It worked for me (I tested the second method, with a table).

Good luck,
Leon

Report · May 06, 2008

Hi Guys,

After many hours of trying, including kidnapping one of our developers to help me, here is where I'm at so far...

Pete's suggestion:
After realising that I had got the scrolling/non scrolling regions the wrong way around in the HTML code [Doh!], I had very high hopes. Saved in the Truecode tab... Opened the WYSIWYG tab... Got a jumbled mess with the information for the scrolling overlaid on top of the information for the non-scrolling region. Hmmm... Not really practical! Although it did eventually get it's act together when I had clicked on several 'things', it didn't really work properly and I became convinced that if it was working properly it would not work as I intended.

Leon's suggestion:
I cannot get either method to work at all. I wonder if this is because the code in the examples have '<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">', and in my topic HTML it says '<!doctype HTML public "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Frameset//EN">'? No matter how many times I try changing this RH puts it back to 'Frameset'. Eventually I became so confused and gave up.

In conclusion, I have learned a little more about HTML code ;o), but I still have not achieved my goal. Although, what I'm thinking now is that I require a scrolling region within a normal, scrolling or otherwise, help topic.

Thanks Pete and Leon for your help so far. If either of you, or anyone else, has any other suggestions I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks

Liz

Report · May 06, 2008

Sorry if I misled you, but do not use anything but the what is in the BODY tags, including the tags themselves. (RH uses the frameset protocol, so you can't change that.)

As I said, the table version (#2) works perfectly in RH.

Good luck,
Leon

Report · May 06, 2008

Hi Leon,

No worries. Even if I just use the code in the body section, I can't get it to work. I'm probably being a numbskull as the tags in the RH code appear to be a little different, but I've tried using these countless times without success. Even if it did work, I'm not sure this is what I'm hoping for.

I think I actually require a scrolling region inside a normal help topic, rather than a scrolling region after a non-scrolling region. Any more ideas are very welcome!

Thanks for your help

Liz

Report · May 23, 2008

No replies... Hrumph! I thought you were a clever lot? ;o))

To clarify, I have a help topic containing a largish image at top centre of the topic, and a table containing referenced information from the image below it.
My problem is that when I scroll down the page to view information lower down, I lose the image.
What I would like to achieve is the ability scroll down the page as normal, but also to have separate scrolling on the table of referenced information.

Can anyone help me? Or does anyone have any good ideas (preferably related to this!) please?

Thank you!

Liz

Report · May 23, 2008

You could create a frameset in the topic, with two frames.

The top frame for the graphic would be sized exactly, so as to prevent scrolling, and the bottom one would use the remaining space (automatically adding a scrollbar).

Just type "framesets" in the RH Help's Search tab, and display "Creating framesets" and "About frames," to get yourself started.

Good luck,
Leon

Report · May 23, 2008

quote:

Originally posted by: MergeThis
You could create a frameset in the topic, with two frames.

The top frame for the graphic would be sized exactly, so as to prevent scrolling, and the bottom one would use the remaining space (automatically adding a scrollbar).

Just type "framesets" in the RH Help's Search tab, and display "Creating framesets" and "About frames," to get yourself started.

Good luck,
Leon

Thanks Leon... But I've been there and tried that one.
As I said in my original post, I don't want to use framesets as my project would end up being a nightmare. It seems that you have to 'assign' a default topic for each frame. I don't want the same (default) topic to be used when I open various topics in a frame. I don't want to create a frameset for each set of topics where I want a portion on the screen/page to be scrolling.

Report · May 23, 2008

Hi, Liz,

Maybe the attached sample will help.

Pete

Report · May 23, 2008

Thanks Pete... But:
I orignally thought I wanted a non-scrolling region, but since then decided I still want the page to scroll as normal. I think this 'non-scrolling' text is confusing everyone!!! Please forget 'non-scrolling'.

What I actually want is a scrolling region inside a normal scrolling page. Looking at your code you kindly attached,. I don't think this will do what I want to achieve.

Any more ideas anyone please?

Report · May 23, 2008

Can you use an <iframe> element to embed the contents of one topic file in another? Something like this:

Report · May 23, 2008

Caveat: iframes won't appear when the user prints the topic.

You could try a simple <DIV> setup like we use for our "InThisTopic" and "Related Topics" links at the upper right of each topic. If you size it for the graphic, then your text would start at the top but to the left of the graphic, effectively "wrapping" around it.

Good luck,
Leon

Report · May 27, 2008

Thanks for your help guys. Looking at what you suggested, and working it out with my limited knowledge of HTML and a very good book, I'm pretty sure your suggestions will not do what I want.

The key is that I want the image to appear in the topic at the top part of the page and the table containing accompanying text to appear below the image. At the moment these are laid out in the same topic. I want to allow the user to scroll the page as they would do normally. However if the screen is too small for the whole table to appear underneath, I want the table to scroll independently to the topic/page so they can view the graphic while reading the accompanying text on the screen.

I have quite a few topics with this layout. I can't use framesets to achieve this as I don't want to use the same default topic for the image or table of accompanying text. If I use framesets then my understanding is that I would have to define a frameset and assign a default topic for each set of image and table topics.

I know, there are a lot of 'I wants' there! Is this possible at all or am I asking for the impossible again?

Report · May 23, 2008

Is it possible to edit the title in this thread to remove the 'Non-scrolling' part?

Report · May 27, 2008

I wouldn't like to say it is impossible but I think that would require a level of programming beyond the norm.

Help others by clicking Correct Answer if the question is answered. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

Report · May 27, 2008

A bit kludgy, but you could:

1. Create a bookmark at each table row.
2. Create a bookmark at the graphic.
3. Create image maps on the graphic that will link to each bookmark.
4. Add up-arrow links to return to the graphic.

Another way of implementing the frameset solution would be to place all your reference info into a single table with bookmarks at every row. That way, you'd have one topic for each screenshot just as you do now, and their second frame would call the single reference table/topic.

Or, you could try my original link about the non-scroll and scroll combo (in spite of your new distaste for that term). Simply create a new topic, and in TrueCode replace everything between the <BODY> and </BODY> tags (including the tags themselves) with the attached code below. There's no reason that should not work.

Good luck,
Leon

Report · May 27, 2008

I played with this again today and I can more or less get it to behave as I would like. Having tweaked a few things I now need to work out exactly what I did so I can set this layout as a template for other topics.

I found that by changing the body scroll line to simply <body>, I get the normal topic scrolling as I wanted. So I can scroll down the page and have a separate scrolling region for the table of accompanying text. This works in the preview but I have yet to generate the output. So far it's looking very promising.

Thanks for all your help. I'll keep you posted.

Liz :o))

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RoboHelp X5 : Scrolling/Non-scrolling regions