MadCap Software Forums

Reading the Mimic forum, I'm quickly getting to the conclusion that Mimic is not yet at the stage of being a production-level tool.

Simple questions can't get an answered, which is nothing like the Flare forum. It seems as if neither the forum participants nor the Flare support team are putting ...

Richard Ferrell wrote:In a CHM, It will not load the Flash player as this is an external program. This is a limitation of the CHM and not with Flare

Hi Richard
Is there a way to invoke the flash movie from the CHM, so it will play in the browser?

Hello
I found a similar issue mentioned but incompletely answered in another topic.

To get the toolbar buttons to work with Mimic Flash movies, you need to change some Flash settings, which you do via the Adobe website. Each of our users would need to make that change on their system. Richard ...

'Show all' line is:

<p> </p><a href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="showDropDowns()">Show all</a>

Script is:

function showDropDowns() {
///*<![CDATA[*/var dDowns=document.getElementsByTagName('div');
for (i=0;i<dDowns.length;i++) {
if (dDowns .id.indexOf('MCDropDownBody') != -1) dDowns .style ...

Oops, well it works in the Flare Preview window, but not via the CHM. Any idea why?

It's been an age and half since I tried this, but back in the day I was able to get a flash movie to work in HTML help by using the Insert > Picture function. Now, having said that, what I mean by "work" in this case is the flash movie played. You couldn't control it though (it started playing as ...

I can't help with the icon or the number of controls, but what you can do is paste the background screen shot on a plain background (white, white with a water mark, or any other color or even a gradient). That will appear as a frame around the screen shot. You could also just add on at the bottom ...

I'm no expert, but the script does define dDowns, as you can see by glancing back to Scott's code. I would try to copy and paste the code again from the earlier topic in case you missed one or more lines somewhere. You could also cut and paste your script into a reply here, and we can check it.

Hi
I want to create a series of movies that are annotated screen shots, not movies.
I set the screen shot as the background bitmap, and I realize that each frame in the movie has to be the same size. This is not an issue, as each movie will be about a screen, and additional windows or sections can ...

Hello
I am using HTMLHelp as my target, and I want to be able to link to a Flash movie I made in Mimic.
When I try to use the method outlined in the help file, it doesn't work in HTMLHelp. However, it does work in Webhelp and in .Net help, which makes sense.
1) Is there a way to make it work via ...

Hi Mike,
The script has 7 matching { and }s, so it should be OK. Here's what I think you are seeing:

XHTML likes for scripts to be enclosed by //<![CDATA[ and //]]> comments. For example:

function myScript() {
//<![CDATA[
code would be here
//]]>
}

Flare likes to rewrite and rearrange that ...

The third last line of the script need another "}".

Thanks for all the info, and for the new script!
I already have your book on moving from RoboHelp to Flare, and I ordered the other two as well. They both look very worthwhile.
I'll also get one of the Javascript ones so that I can become more knowledgeable on the basics.
Once again, thanks very ...

Forgot you mentioned it was a script. In the stylesheet there is an option to set the display to list, table, block, etc. Hopefully Scott will be able to help you since the list option gives you an error.
Thanks.
I decided to set both graphics to be the same, it's not that meaningful. So, no ...

Hi Mike,
That script will work fine if you call it when you open your topic--it assumes all of the links are closed.

Calling the script from a link and checking to see if the drop-down is open or closed is harder, but I think it can be done. Let me take a look.

Hi Scott
Thanks for all your help ...

In the script, I'm setting the style.display ="block" or "none" to show and hide the text. Is there a better way to set it that would also set the graphic as well?
Try setting it to list.
Hi Lisa
Not to sound too much like Bill Clinton, but what is "it"? I tried changing "block" to "List" but I ...

Hi Mike,
No problem. This short script (from the post above--no changes) will open a specific drop-down and change its icon:

<a href="javascript:document.links[1].click()">Click here</a>

This slightly revised script will open all drop-downs -and- change their icons:

function showDropDowns ...

Do you mean the drop-down's icon (the default arrow that points right or down), or are you creating your own link icon that you want to change? In my test topic, the drop-down's arrow changes when you click the link. It should change for you, too. The code "clicks" the link just like a user might ...

Ah, I see. You can find it in the same basic place.

Click "MadCap | dropDown" in the list of elements in the Stylesheet editor.

At the top of the right pane, select "Show: Set Properties" from the drop-down. You should see several settings, including "mc-closed-image" and "mc-open-image". That is ...

Hi Scott
The script you gave me works, and I can also close all the links via another script. However, it doesn't set the drop-down graphic to the correct open / closed state. Is there a way to accomplish this?

MikeKatz, you can find all the properties for images under the img element in your stylesheet (in the Stylesheet Editor's drop-down, select Show All Styles. Then look for the "img" element.

Hi Lisa

Thanks, but I'm not looking for these. I'm looking for the specific place, for the drop-down style ...

Hi Andrew
Where in the style sheet can I get to the image information?
I was helped in another topic to create a script that opens and closes all the drop-downs in a topic, which works great. However, it does not change the drop-down image to show the open or closed status, and I'd like to do that.

Thanks Lisa, it works perfectly.
Is there any book or website that gives all this information in one place?

Hello
I've been playing around a bit with styles a bit, but I don't really understand them in detail.
I received a script from the forum that opens all drop-down text automatically in this topic:
http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7900
I created another script to close them as well ...

Hi Mike,
This script finds all of the div tags and checks each one to see if its ID includes "MCDropDownBody" (Flare places your drop-down content in a div that is named "MCDropDownBody" plus a unique number). If "indexOf" is -1, the div's ID does not contain "MCDropDownBody."

"Block" means to ...