Programmatically showing and hiding navigation Pane

[Anjali]

Hi,
We just recently purchased FLare and Capture to build help for our .net application. For the HTML Help target by default we can hide the Navigation pane on startup by using the settings in the 'Skin'.

In our .net application there are two ways by which we can show the HTML help.
1. Context sensitive(each view has a help button which takes you to the help topic), in this case we want to hide the Navigation.
2. The other being Help menu from where we launch the chm file and here we want to show the navigation pane.

Does anyone know how to show and hide the Navigation pane programmatically? We are using VS.Net 2003.

Thanks,
Anjali

[Pete Lees]

Hi,

You may want to look at the HTML Help API command HH_SET_WIN_TYPE, which lets you define the properties of the help window at run time. One of those properties is fNotExpanded, which specifies that the help viewer is opened with the navigation pane closed.

But I believe that it would be far easier just to set up two window types in your help file, one with the navigation pane hidden and the other with it showing, and call the first with your context help calls and the second from the Help menu. In HTML Help API calls, you specify the required window type by appending its name to the second parameter, like this:

HtmlHelp(hwndCaller, "c:\app\help\Help.chm>NoNavPane", HH_HELP_CONTEXT, 1001);

Pete

[Anjali]

Thanks, Pete. But how to set up two window types in the help file ? Can you explain it in detail?

[Anjali]

Update on the issue...

Just create two skins in flare project and then programmatically call HTMLHelp as mentioned by Pete..
HtmlHelp(hwndCaller, "c:\app\help\Help.chm>NoNavPane", HH_HELP_CONTEXT, 1001);

The attachment shows how to create two skins in flare...

[cruitbuck]

I discovered that Under WebHelpSetup if the nav pane width is ANYTHING less than "1" the default of width of 200 is issued. Perhaps it would be useful to request a "destroy nav pane" call.

BobB
OZ Systems, Inc.
Dallas, TX