Prev/Next buttons Inactive at Launch

[jmenning]

We are converting a tutorial over from RoboHelp, and the Previous/Next buttons are giving us a bit of trouble.

The idea is that we launch a window with minimal buttons: Show/Hide, Next, Previous, Print. The user can then use the Next and Previous buttons to page through the tutorial.

However, when the CHM file is launched with the TOC hidden, the Next and Previous buttons are grayed out. If I click the Show button and click in the TOC, the buttons activate and start working, even if the TOC is hidden again.

I'm out of ideas on how to get around this problem, and I'm hoping I'm missing something incredibly obvious. Does anyone have suggestions?

I really, really, really don't want to manually link the topics together, but that's what I'm down to.

[srnowlin]

you could use the webhelp custom menu, I have had it where the chm's regular menu is not shown and the webhelp navigation is through the skin. The downsize is you have only the default madcap toolbar for your base bar, but you could still substitute the button graphics and their arrangements. Perhaps you could still show the regular chm menu less the previous and next, and just have the previous and next from the webhelp showing.

[jmenning]

I am not averse to using the WebHelp toolbar (I've looked into using it on several occasions), but I've not found a way to add the Next/Previous buttons to it. The list of Available toolbar buttons (on the WebHelp Toolbar tab in the Skin Editor) does not include Next or Previous. Is there a script floating around that would let me create custom buttons for this purpose?

[srnowlin]

Well the only option I see there (and I"m sorry I recommended that, for some reason I though it had the buttons you needed)...but you can add a button class called Next and then under Type for that class you can set the graphic and the function for OnClick - that's probably the javascript you're looking for. I'm not a javascript guru, but perhaps something really simple can be found on the forums or the web. I would play with it, but I've had the worse time with disappearing stylesheets.

[jmenning]

I've been looking on and off for a couple of days, now, but I'm not seeing any way to script in links or "activate" the TOC in some way. I'll keep digging, though, and if I come up with anything I'll post it.

Thanks.

[i-tietz]

Funny that - I WANT my forward/back buttons to be inactive at launch but I don't get it ...
I know that it works, because I have seen it:

html_help_buttons_(de)activated.gif

My Help (top left) and the Help of another software ... it works on the other help, but not on mine ...
How can I change that? Am I overlooking a checkbox somewhere?

[KevinDAmery]

Just to clarify, you are talking about buttons that go to the Previous and Next TOC items, not the Forward / Back browse history buttons, right? (These are two separate functions that people sometimes describe as if they are the same thing).

Assuming you mean the "real" Previous / Next buttons, there is a gotcha in HTML help regarding these. They won't work if there are any spaces in the file names or paths to the source topics. You'll need to make sure there are no spaces in the file names AND in the folder names through the entire path. (Yet another reason not to use the Windows "My Folders" structure.)

Spaces in the path will also cause breadcrumbs not to work, btw.

[srnowlin]

So, If I read the post correctly, he WANTS them to be deactivated so to achieve this he would need to add spaces in the path? And this would cause the Breadcrumbs to cease working?

[i-tietz]

Just to clarify, you are talking about buttons that go to the Previous and Next TOC items, not the Forward / Back browse history buttons, right? (These are two separate functions that people sometimes describe as if they are the same thing).

Now I know why I didn't understand this problem ...
There's buttons that you can use to walk through the TOC? I didn't know that ... What are they good for? Where would they be?

Assuming you mean the "real" Previous / Next buttons,

The "real" ones are those for scanning the history? Then "Yes".

They won't work if there are any spaces in the file names or paths to the source topics. You'll need to make sure there are no spaces in the file names AND in the folder names through the entire path. (Yet another reason not to use the Windows "My Folders" structure.) Spaces in the path will also cause breadcrumbs not to work, btw.

Done already. No blanks, no special characters - we only get as exotic as underscores between "words".

AND: Those buttons work fine. Once I have a history they follow it without problems.
It's only: They always look the same, the user has no chance to find out that the current topic is at one end of the history ... Usually (in the browser) the button that is not necessary will be inactive. At launch that would leave both buttons inactive - mine are active all the time ... and that's my problem.

[LTinker68]

At launch that would leave both buttons inactive - mine are active all the time ... and that's my problem.

I wonder if it's a caching issue. The cache remembers the topic you last visited so those buttons always seem to be available to you, especially if you build and test, build and test, over and over. Before you build, do you delete the entire Output folder? That might automatically clear the cache because the previous version is gone. It works to delete the output folder when using Internet Explorer, so it might work with HTML Help output, too.

[KevinDAmery]

Just to clarify, you are talking about buttons that go to the Previous and Next TOC items, not the Forward / Back browse history buttons, right? (These are two separate functions that people sometimes describe as if they are the same thing).

Now I know why I didn't understand this problem ...
There's buttons that you can use to walk through the TOC? I didn't know that ... What are they good for? Where would they be?

They're the Previous and Next buttons. The history buttons are Forward and Back (the same as a web browser). They're useful in cases where you want users to be able to follow things in sequence, such as if you have a number of topics that build upon one another.

Assuming you mean the "real" Previous / Next buttons,

The "real" ones are those for scanning the history? Then "Yes".

In this case "real" means the TOC following ones, since the OP used the terms "Previous" and "Next." As mentioned above, the history browsing buttons are called "Forward" and "Back."

They won't work if there are any spaces in the file names or paths to the source topics. You'll need to make sure there are no spaces in the file names AND in the folder names through the entire path. (Yet another reason not to use the Windows "My Folders" structure.) Spaces in the path will also cause breadcrumbs not to work, btw.

Done already. No blanks, no special characters - we only get as exotic as underscores between "words".

AND: Those buttons work fine. Once I have a history they follow it without problems.
It's only: They always look the same, the user has no chance to find out that the current topic is at one end of the history ... Usually (in the browser) the button that is not necessary will be inactive. At launch that would leave both buttons inactive - mine are active all the time ... and that's my problem.

I'm not sure that HTML Help is that smart, unfortunately. M$ developed it back in the Win95 / 98 era and hadn't really figured out how to be web-compliant at the time. (That's RamonS's cue to say they still haven't, natch... which is true enough, but beside the point.) Since these buttons are provided by the HTML Help viewer, there isn't alot - ok, anything - we can do about how they behave or look.

[i-tietz]

I'm not sure that HTML Help is that smart, unfortunately. M$ developed it back in the Win95 / 98 era and hadn't really figured out how to be web-compliant at the time. (That's RamonS's cue to say they still haven't, natch... which is true enough, but beside the point.) Since these buttons are provided by the HTML Help viewer, there isn't alot - ok, anything - we can do about how they behave or look.

Yes, it can - just have a look at the gif I inserted above.
I have quite a few HTML helps on my compy with buttons that respond to the current position of the history. But I never PRODUCED a HTML with that feature ... and I'm wondering what I have to do to get that sort of thing ...

[i-tietz]

Just to clarify, you are talking about buttons that go to the Previous and Next TOC items, not the Forward / Back browse history buttons, right? (These are two separate functions that people sometimes describe as if they are the same thing).

Now I know why I didn't understand this problem ...
There's buttons that you can use to walk through the TOC? I didn't know that ... What are they good for? Where would they be?

They're the Previous and Next buttons. The history buttons are Forward and Back (the same as a web browser). They're useful in cases where you want users to be able to follow things in sequence, such as if you have a number of topics that build upon one another.

I still don't understand ... I don't think I've ever seen those buttons ... care to make a screenshot and include it in a post?

[KevinDAmery]

They're off by default, but if you go to the HTML Help Setup page in your skin you can turn them on.

[jmenning]

Here's a screenshot:

nextprevious.jpg

So, group 1 are the Previous/Next combo. These go up and down through your TOC. That's useful for short projects like tutorials or something where your users want to be able to step through a project.

Group 2 are the Back/Forward combo. These work like your web browser, moving you through your history. These are good for getting back where you were before you clicked on a link, or if you otherwise wound up somewhere unexpected.

My original question was getting the Previous/Next buttons (group 1) to start as active when I didn't start with the TOC shown.

As to the question of getting the Back/Forward buttons to start grayed out (since they don't do anything until you start moving through the help system), I don't know of a way.

As Kevin said, you turn all these buttons on and off in your skin. Go to Project Organizer > Skins > whatever your skin is > HTML Help Setup; then select the check boxes for the options you want to include.

[i-tietz]

... up to now I thought those buttons are for scanning browse sequences ... that's why they escaped my notice.
Thanks!