Link to Video

[jblackwood]

Is it possible to have a link to a Captivate-generated video (.swf) in a topic that I can get to popup in a separate window and also be able to set the size of the window in which the video appears?

[KevinDAmery]

To add a swf, use Flare's tools for adding images. (Yeah, I know it's a video, not an image--I found that a little confusing at first too....)

For the rest, what I would do is create a skin that has the dimensions and other characteristics that you want. Then create a topic that includes the swf and makes use of that skin. Finally, when you link to it, use the target = blank attribute in the link to force it to appear in a new browser window.

[jblackwood]

Thanks! What in particular do I need to set in the skin. I haven't had muhc experience with them other than setting up the one basic one we use for the help in general.

[KevinDAmery]

Go into the size page and set the size you want. You'll also have to turn off the "Use Browser default size" option at the top.

[beagley]

To add a swf, use Flare's tools for adding images. (Yeah, I know it's a video, not an image--I found that a little confusing at first too....)

For the rest, what I would do is create a skin that has the dimensions and other characteristics that you want. Then create a topic that includes the swf and makes use of that skin. Finally, when you link to it, use the target = blank attribute in the link to force it to appear in a new browser window.

Kevin,
What you wrote above makes it sound like I can assign a different skin to a specific topic within a WebHelp system. Is that possible? I don't see anything in the properties of a topic that let me do that.

I would like to click on a topic and have it open a new window with a specified height/width/menu bars/ so forth.

-d

[KevinDAmery]

You'd control it in the TOC. Right click on a topic in your TOC and go to the Advanced tab. There you can set the skin to use. The Default option has it use the same skin as is specified in your Target: alternatively, you can manually select a skin for the topic to use.

[beagley]

You'd control it in the TOC.

Ahhhhh!

Thank you.

It seems so obvious, now. Can't believe I missed that.

-d

[NorthEast]

You'd control it in the TOC. Right click on a topic in your TOC and go to the Advanced tab. There you can set the skin to use. The Default option has it use the same skin as is specified in your Target: alternatively, you can manually select a skin for the topic to use.

Could you actually get this to work? I tried this out and assigned a different skin to a topic, but the skin wasn't used when I selected that topic in the TOC.

Anyway, I use Captivate movies in my projects, and I wrote my own script to display the movies. The script uses the javascript window.open command, and opens the movie in a new window without the browser scrollbars, toolbars, etc. It only works for links inside topics, not TOC links though.

[RamonS]

If you run the help exclusively from a server you could run a server side script that produces the new window. Then you can link the ToC entry to that script.

[KevinDAmery]

Could you actually get this to work? I tried this out and assigned a different skin to a topic, but the skin wasn't used when I selected that topic in the TOC.

To be fair, I haven't tried it (I don't deliver to webhelp and I don't need multiple skins for my purposes). I just found that that's where the control was and gave Madcap the benefit of the doubt that it would actually work Could be a bug....

[beagley]

Dave: I actually decided to put a splash image of my video in a topic and make that a link. Clicking on the splash image replaces the topic with the movie file, so I didn't need to fiddle with the TOC.

So no, I didn't try the multiple skin thing.