Automatically "show" file structure using MapID calls

[brianmwise]

I know this has to have been covered somewhere, but I can't find it for the life of me.

I have a project that I'm providing MapID calls for HTML links. Pretty basic.

What I -want- to do is make it so that when the user clicks the link with the MapID, it shows the full project with contents and index in addition to the content.

My previous links look like:

http://support.greatcompany.com/en/UserHelp/GreatcompanyHelp.htm#Introduction/1_1_Starter.htm

My new links look like:

http://support.greatcompany.com/en/UserHelp/GreatcompanyHelp_csh.htm#topicid=GC00000001

The difference is the first link shows the Contents bar, Index, TOC, etc.

The second link doesn't.

I KNOW there's a way to get the second link to show contents / index / TOC but I can't find it, and I went poking about grainge.org and others.

A little help?

[brianmwise]

....and I answer my own question in nothing flat!

Fortunately I was able to find the answer on Grainge's site.

Here's the deal:

http://support.greatcompany.com/en/UserHelp/GreatcompanyHelp.htm#Intro duction/1_1_Starter.htm

This opens "normally" - that is, it shows the navigation panes. When calling a topicID or MapID link, it won't neccessarily show the navpane automatically.

So when you move to:

http://support.greatcompany.com/en/UserHelp/GreatcompanyHelp_csh.htm#t opicid=GC00000001

It will only show that topic - no navpanes, no nuttin'. That's the default setting. So rather than tear hair out, adding the simple line of [,withnavpane=true] (sans brackets) to the end of the link will do the trick.

http://support.greatcompany.com/en/UserHelp/GreatcompanyHelp_csh.htm#t opicid=GC00000001,withnavpane...

Hoo. Ah.

[robdavis101]

Fine - but it is better to know how to change the default setting. I also have been troubled by this issue, and it would help if I could just change the setting (one way or the other)  when generating the Help file. Any ideas?

[Willam_van_Weelden]

Hi,

This is something normally done by your developer. When you use the 'default' method with windowd, you can specify that the navpane must be shown. Your developer includes the window in the call and the help takes care of the rest.

See:

• http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/calling_webhelp/calling_webhelp.htm
• http://www.wvanweelden.eu/robohelp/webhelp/csh

The method described by brianmwise is one of the 'legacy' methods included. You may want to look into using windows. Choose the method that suits you best. RoboHelp also provides some default API's in your RoboHelp installation folder. Your developers can use these API's to quickly add help calls in their application.

Greet,

Willam

[brianmwise]

William, thanks so very much. That's extremely helpful. Not usable for me in my situation, but definitely helpful.

The problem is that I'm pretty much the only person at my company that uses or wants to involve themselves in working on these solutions, so when someone replies "Just hand it to your developer" that's pretty much like saying (at least for me) "Get Sparkles the Unicorn to touch it with his magic horn for you. You'll be all right."

I admit some of this stuff is indeed important to know but at the same time it helps immensely to get an answer that the questioner can implement on their own. While the solution I put up might be "legacy" I also really need to know how to create those links and tags.

For my reference - the tags I put up are just direct HTML links I needed to give to a web developer so he could link them to an ID that I could change on my end without breaking his page. Pretty simple, and not at all what was required from my devs who built the contextual help links into the application.

[Willam_van_Weelden]

Hi,

LOL, that sounds familiar somehow. For creating easy links, you may want to go with the _csh start file. I use that method myself and it's easy to create URL's for that.

Greet,

Willam