Content always displayed for navigation menu items?

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JA - MadCap
Jr. Propeller Head
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Jan 07, 2021 5:16 am

Content always displayed for navigation menu items?

Post by JA - MadCap »

Hello

I’m hoping someone can help with controlling when content is displayed for navigation menu items in HTML5 output.

I’d like to create an online help where new pages aren’t loaded for a menu item if there are child items. It’s probably easiest with an example, so I mean I’d like it to work as in http://www.technical-writers.co.uk/samp ... elcome.htm. So, in the example, if I click the Getting Started menu item, the menu is expanded to show the child items but nothing is changed on the main page. And if I click one of them that doesn’t have children, for example, Getting started with MyAirangel, then the page content is displayed. But if I click one with child items, for example Manage Myairangel user accounts, then it’s as with the higher level one, the child items are displayed but the content on the page isn’t changed.

I can’t find a setting in Flare for how to do this, so a page is always loaded when I click a menu item. I found some MadCap examples of online help done with Flare, but the same thing happens in the examples so I’m wondering if it’s not possible to change the behaviour?

For example https://help.okta.com/en/prod/Content/T ... anding.htm on https://www.madcapsoftware.com/customer ... -showcase/

And https://madcappeteam.mcoutput.com/cardi ... t/Home.htm > Getting Started on https://www.madcapsoftware.com/download ... templates/

I’m hoping someone has done this and can give me some ideas?
Psider
Propellus Maximus
Posts: 811
Joined: Wed Jul 06, 2011 1:32 am

Re: Content always displayed for navigation menu items?

Post by Psider »

If you create the book but don't link it to a topic, it should do what you want. (Although I haven't done this with the newer outputs like Top Nav, I can't imagine it's changed.)

Getting Started (book, not linked)
-- Getting Started (topic)
NorthEast
Master Propellus Maximus
Posts: 6359
Joined: Mon Mar 05, 2007 8:33 am

Re: Content always displayed for navigation menu items?

Post by NorthEast »

As Psider says, if you don't link an item in the TOC to a topic, then clicking it will just open/close the TOC.

However, you only need to use that technique if you're using the older Tripane skin. It's a problem with the Tripane skin because there's only one clickable area in the TOC navigation - so if that TOC item is linked to a topic, it means you can't browse and expand/collapse the TOC without opening the topic.
Whilst you can get around that by not linking the TOC item to a topic, one major drawback is that you can't navigate using breadcrumbs because unlinked TOC items will be "dead" links.

So I'd recommend using the newer Side Nav skin instead of Tripane, because the navigation in that skin has two separate clickable areas - you click the text to open the topic, and click the arrows to expand/collapse the TOC.
See Flare's help for an example: https://help.madcapsoftware.com/flare2020r3/
Using this means all items in the TOC can be linked to a topic, so things like breadcrumbs will work too.
JA - MadCap
Jr. Propeller Head
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Jan 07, 2021 5:16 am

Re: Content always displayed for navigation menu items?

Post by JA - MadCap »

Thanks Psider
I did that and it’s just how I want it. Except that obviously now the TOC doesn’t work for PDF output as well. But I got some ideas on other posts and I’ve created a TOC with all the entries in twice and using Screen and Print conditional text.


Hi Dave Lee
And thanks to you as well. That’s really interesting – we’re actually using the Side Nav skin but I hadn’t noticed that the behaviour was different between clicking the book title and the navigation arrow! So really good to know.

And I hadn’t been paying attention to the breadcrumbs because for what we’re doing at the moment we don’t need links in them because we don’t ever want the book pages to open. If we have the book pages we’d need to put filler intro text in there just to have something on the page. But in the future we might have to weigh up which is most important, so that’s definitely good to know too.
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