Book Colour in Microsoft HTML help

[Shaunwilks]

Hello all,

We have a help project which has a style sheet that is coloured using an orange type of colouring.
We are very happy with the formatting of the topics however we would like to replace the TOC purple books in the Microsoft HTML Help compile with orange books.

I have noticed the graphics exist for this in the Gallery folder but saw no where in the UI to set the format of the TOC. I have also tried to rename the .gif files in the gallery but the compile of the MS HTML help doesn't seem to use these files.

Can someone please advise how I may do this, or are purple books in MS HTML help standard ?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

[Shaunwilks]

I should add that I set the image in the MS HTML Help CHM "Edit" properties but this changes all the books and topic icons to be the image I select.

What I am trying to achieve is to have the book_closed and book_open icons change from the purple book to the orange book. I don't want the icons of topics to change and I do not want the icons on the books to stay the same when they are expanded.

Can I set the TOC to binary and edit the htc file in anyway to achieve this ?

[Pooja_at_Adobe]

Hi Shaunwilks,

Please tell me the version number of RoboHelp that you are using and I'll tell you the steps to achieve it. Even otherwise, just FYI, you need to open the Skins folder and select the skin, right-click and click Edit.

If I could know the version no of RH, I could suggest how to navigate to the Skins folder.

Please let me know.

Regards,
Pooja

[Pooja_at_Adobe]

Sorry Shaun, I did not see your second post earlier. Its clear that you already know how to get to the Navigation tab of the Skin editor. The only thing, I would have added was to change the color of the closed book and opened book icons using some Image editor like Photoshop or any other s/w that you prefer to use and then call those icons using the skin editor.

[Pete_Lees]

Hi, Shaun,

This bit of HTML Help functionality was never properly implemented by Microsoft. The basic procedure is to create a Windows Bitmap (.bmp) file that contains your strip of custom icons and then reference this in the contents (.hhc) file of your help project. See this page for Microsoft's instructions:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms670110(VS.85).aspx

The problem is that your contents file must specify the absolute path to the .bmp file, which must be stored outside the help file.

Rick Stone provides some instructions on how to use a custom icon strip in his Tips &Tricks file, which is available from here (you need the full package):

http://www.robowizard.com/RoboWizard/NewProject.htm#Downloads/Tips_and_Tricks.htm

And there are some additional workarounds described here:

http://helpware.net/FAR/far_faq.htm#CustomIcons

Pete