Automatically show Navigation Pane on specific topic url references?

[ddng911]

Hello,

I hope this question won't be too much of a bother. I am trying to have the navigation pane automatically show when users reference topics by their specific URL. Instead of having the show link on the top left corner, II am trying to automatically have the navigation pane show. Also, it would to suffice that if the user clicks on a topic from the navigation pane the webhelp won't display two navigation panes. I can't use the aternating ?# and ??# because i do not know how users will click on links. I'm thinking of writign a javascript that checks t osee if navigation is up or not and if not, show navigation.

Thank you for your time.

[Peter Grainge]

I think something is missing in the question. It's clear you understand the link has to be constructed as path/startpage.htm#path#target topic. Your question also suggests you may have seen Calling WebHelp on my site as you refer to a method described there.

You say you do not know how your users will click on links? Elaborate on that. Once they have opened the help, the call is no longer an issue as those links work within the help displayed. The problem is when they open the help a second time from your application. That is handled within the code in your call, don't ask me how.

Maybe you are talking about calling the help from somewhere else? As I said, it feels like a bit of information is missing.

---

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@petergrainge

[Willam_van_Weelden · Accepted solution]

Hi,

See http://www.wvanweelden.eu/robohelp/webhelp/skinwebhelp/alwaysshownavigation. I think that is what you are looking for.

Greet,

Willam

[ddng911]

Thanks William, that worked just how I wanted it to. I knew show() was in there, but didn't realize I had to send a message. However though I am getting an error on topics with this script in IE. I'm thinking it might be the null parameter in the msg constructor.  Is there a value to fix this error?

Webpage error details

Message: 'oParam' is null or not an object
Line: 134
Char: 3
Code: 0
URI: */WebHelp/whskin_frmset01.htm

[ddng911]

Actually,I figured it out playing with some values. I simply replace the null argument in your instructions with a blank string "" and it worked perfectly. I believe the msgreceive function looks at the oparam argument regardless of the value. I was also debating whether or not I should have used a try catch statement too but the blank string worked as far as I can tell.

[Willam_van_Weelden]

Weird, I receive no error on IE on my pc. But testing with IETester does produce the error message.

Ah wel, the empty string solves that. I've updated the article with your info. Thanks.

Greet,

Willam