Single Related Topic?

[Mike-Wheeler]

Perhaps I'm missing something, but whenever I try to add a Related Topics button at the bottom of a webhelp topic, if I have just 1 related topic to include I encounter a problem. The problem is that whenever the user clicks the Related Topics button in these instances, it takes them instantly to the 1 related topic. If I have multiple related topics then the popup menu appears. What I'd like to do for single related topics is to still have the popup menu and give the user the option of visiting that 1 topic or not. Any suggestions?

[Captiv8r]

Hi documentality and welcome to our community

Give this a go:

When a Related Topics control is inserted into a topic, the help author must choose the topics that will appear in the list. If only one topic is added using the control, the default behavior for the control is to simply display the topic.

Sometimes you may not want this to occur. Instead, you want the menu or list of topics to display, giving the user a choice to back out. Additionally, I believe this adds a new level of consistency to help projects.

I could easily see an end user growing confused when in one topic they click a button labeled Related Topics and are presented with a list to choose from. Yet in other topics, clicking the button whisks them away to a different topic.

You can do this using the TrueCode editor. Select your Related Topics button in WYSIWYG and click the TrueCode tab.

You should see a "green" area and a "gray" area of code related to the button.

Add the following line to the gray area.

<param name=flags value="1">

See if that helps... Rick

[Mike-Wheeler]

That still didn't work for me. I made your suggested change and saved my project and generate help. The button still takes me to the topic instead of providing the pop-up selection window with the 1 choice. When I go back to TrueCode view it appears that my changes don't persist because I don't see the code that I just added. Any thoughts?

[Peter Grainge]

Have you tried saving the change before you revert to WYSIWYG. That sometimes helps.

You'll need to check what happens if you later make a change in WYSIWYG and then save. If that loses the change it could get tricky but it may be OK. You'll have to test.

[Captiv8r]

In addition to fellow Adobe Community Expert Peter's excellent advice, here is my own favorite method for coaxing RoboHelp into accepting changes like this.

1. Change view to TrueCode and make the tweak.
2. Click the Save All button.
3. Instead of clicking the WYSIWYG tab, immediately double-click a different topic to call it into the WYSIWYG editor.

However, as Peter stated, you probably need to be a bit careful with opening that topic in the WYSIWYG editor to make changes down the road.

RoboHelp's WYSIWYG editor reminds me of my son when he was very young. He loved to "help", but would almost always get it wrong. This caused me lots of extra effort. But I loved him anyway.

Cheers... Rick