Creating printer-friendly output from WebHelp

[amatsumoto]

Is there a control you can add to WebHelp topics that open a printer-friendly version of the entire topic? I realize there is a Print button you can add to your skin, but that only prints the topic you have displayed, and the output includes other formatting from the master page (banner, breadcrumbs, etc.) What I would like to have is a Print button in the topic that opens the topic that is displayed plus the other pages that make up the entire topic, but minus master page formatting. Does Browse Sequence have anything to do with this?

For example, we are putting our tutorials into WebHelp. If you looked in our WebHelp TOC, you would see each tutorial is a bookthat has a number of topics. We want our users to be able to print the full content for a tutorial from WebHelp. Can we do that with a control in Flare? Or, do we have to do this work outside of Flare? Or, is it best/easiest/possible to create PDFs of each tutorial and we add a Print button to get to the PDF?

We're using Flare 3.1, hoping to get v4 soon.

Thanks!

[LTinker68]

You might be able to do it by creating a second skin, one that doesn't use the masterpage and that perhaps has specific dimensions. You then create an icon or link that calls the same topic file but with the new skin name appended so that it opens the topic in that skin. And I recommend having it open in a popup window or a new tab/window (target=_blank).

When you build the output, both skins will be included in the output, but the new skin will only be used when you specifically call it as part of a link.

[amatsumoto]

It sounds like that could create the printer-friendly version I'm looking for, but is there a way to open all the sequential topics together in that skin? For example, Tutorial 1 contains Topic A, Topic B, Topic C, and so forth. If I open a printer-friendly version of Topic A, it won't automatically include Topics B, C, and so forth in the window. Is there a way to do that? I'd even settle for a print version uses my master page if I could open all the sequential topics together.

Thanks!

[LTinker68]

There might be a way with JavaScript or something that would print all three topics one right after another.