Top navigation + Tripane output

[jovi_amy]

Hi everyone,

I'm pretty new to flare, so excuse me if I'm unable to explain my query using accurate Madcap terms.

At my org, we are trying to build documentation for a product i.e. prepare a separate HTML5 for the whole product and this may not be integrated within the application.
What we are trying to achieve is, have a separate top navigation home page as the starting page of the documentation, and the rest of the documentation in tripane skin as it looks more suitable for the content.

I'm not sure if I can achieve it just by having 2 skins and 2 targets in the same project. I'm not sure if it would work and I haven't tried it yet.

Please help me with any leads or links of any similar discussion that may have been posted and answered, if possible.

Thank you

[NorthEast]

Although two separate targets using two separate skins would work, it has some disadvantages - e.g. you can't search from the home page.

If it were me, I'd suggest:

(1) Use the Side Nav skin and not Tripane.
Side Nav is a much newer skin type in Flare, whereas Tripane skin is fairly old now and uses frames.
Generally, I'd only use Tripane if you specifically need a feature that it provides that Side Nav doesn't - e.g. project merging.

(2) If you just want to hide the navigation pane on the home page, a simpler solution is just to use one target and skin.
If using Side Nav, adding this CSS for the home page only will hide the navigation.

Code: Select all

nav.sidenav-wrapper 
{
    display: none;
}

Put this in a separate CSS file, link the home page topic to the CSS file, and make sure the target is set to Allow local stylesheets.
Then for the navigation on your home page (instead of Top Nav), just manually add some links to the main sections of your docs, and the links could be formatted to make them prominent such as putting them in boxes/tiles.