How to view the "blue menubar" by default?

[swlpi]

Hello all, I'm a new user to the community, and look forward to interacting with some of you.

I should first note that as a Developer, I have no hands-on experience with RH. Our Documentation team is making use of RH to display context-sensitive help on our product, and it looks great!

I do have one question. When a help link is clicked, how do I enable the blue bar at the top? (FYI: Link)

Right now, it just displays a "Show" link at the top. Once clicked, it will show the TOC along with the blue menubar. When I hide the TOC, the blue menubar stays put (with the Contents, Index, Search buttons), and this is the default starting point I would like to have (instead of just the "Show" hyperlink).

Is there an .htm file I can manually edit to include this blue menubar? Perhaps the .htm output file after the online help is generated?

Any info would be great - thanks in advance for any time taken to respond.

[Peter Grainge]

Welcome to the forum.

You don't need to edit any file. You need to find out from the authors which is the start page. Usually there are three HTM files in the root of the output. If the start page were called index.htm, there would also be index_csh.htm and index_rhc.htm. If you double click index.htm, or whatever they have called it, the help should open as you wish. Run locally, you might get a yellow bar requiring you to authorise Active X. You will not get that when the help is on a server.

See my site for the Calling WebHelp articles. That will explain how to open the help to the CSH topics but with the TOC and nav bar opened as well. Our developers use the URL method and it works well.

[swlpi]

Thanks for the warm welcome, and for your response Peter.

I do see those output files you mentioned in your post. But I should have mentioned in my original post that I did not want to show the Contents by default. When opening the index.htm, it shows the blue menubar, as well as the Contents . Is there a way to only show the blue menubar, and leave it up to the user to open the Contents?

[Peter Grainge]

Your options are you open CSH topic with a direct call so that you get a Show link which will then display the TOC and navbar OR you open via the Start Page as I described. I think you are wanting the topic plus the TOC etc buttons but not the TOC panel, correct?

Maybe you could mock up a screenshot of what you want?

[swlpi]

This is what currently happens when I click on a help link

Here is a mockup if the desired page

In order to get the blue menubar, I have to click "Show", which opens the TOC, and manually hide the TOC. Is there a way to directly enable the blue menubar by default, instead of clicking "Show" to hide the TOC?

And just a reminder that I don't want the TOC to appear unless the user wants to see it (by clicking "Contents").

Thanks again for any info!

[RoboWizard · Accepted solution]

Hi there

I believe I've documented how to accomplish this in my Skinny on Skins file (freely downloadable from this link right here)

Basically you amend some code so that the TOC initially appears and after a very brief delay, it collapses.

Sorry, there is no way I've discovered to cause things to simply open as you wish by default. You may wish to suggest it as an option to the development team. You may do so using the link below.

Click here to view the WishForm/Bug Reporting Form

Cheers... Rick

[swlpi]

Ah, thanks for the suggestion!

Is it proper protocol to assign a message as "the answer"? Peter and RoboWizard both provided great assistance, I'd like to give both of them credit for taking the time to respond...

[Peter Grainge]

You can only apply that to one answer which has to be Rick's as that gave you the method you sought. That's OK.