I figured out a way to get a custom window size for popups. It has the added benefit of not only working with image maps, but also with <a> tags, so you don't have to set the mc-popup-width and mc-popup-height properties on that tag, if you don't want to.
Anyway, here are the steps to get a custom window size for popups, including popups called from image maps.
- If you use a master page for your main topics and don't want the popups to use the same master page, then create a new master page and set it up the way you want it. For instance, if you have breadcrumbs in your main topics, then remove the breadcrumbsProxy from the popups master page, because it'll look a bit odd, otherwise. Name the new master page something obvious, like popupMaster.
- Open the Stylesheet Editor and scroll down to the html tag.
- Left-click on the html tag and click the Add Class icon. Give the new class a name, such as popups.
- In the Advanced view of the Stylesheet Editor, set the display category to Show: Property Group.
- Expand the Box group and set the width and height properties to whatever dimensions you want the popup window to be. Setting the width and height fields to "auto" will have the popup window auto-size based on the content.
- Expand the Unclassified group and set the mc-master-page property to the name of the master page created in step 1, if one was used; otherwise leave this property blank.
- Save the stylesheet.
- In the Content Explorer, right-click on the popup topic and select Properties from the menu that appears.
- In the Topic Properties screen, set the Topic Style Class field to popup, or whatever name you gave the html class created in step 3.
- Click Ok.
- Open the topic that contains the image map or text that will link to the popup topic. Create the hyperlink using the appropriate method, making sure to set the Target Frame field to Popup Window.
- Save the topic and build the project. Test the link.
As noted in step 5, setting the height and width properties to "auto" will automatically adjust the window size to the content. Scrollbars only appear in popups with lots of content. You might think this would be the same as not going through any of the steps above, but the auto sizing through this method has better results, which leads me to think that somewhere Flare is specifying a set width and height for its "auto"-sized popups.
One other note... If you're creating a new topic that you know is going to be used as a popup topic, then I recommend holding off on steps 8 and 9 until you've finished adding all the content to the popup topic. The XML Editor will honor the width and height set in step 5 above, so even though the XML Editor appears to have a lot of room to type in, it will in fact limit your typing to the specified dimensions. If your html tag is set to a width of 400px, for instance, then you'll only get a few characters to appear on each line as you type, depending on the size of the font. It's a bit odd writing that way, so if it's too annoying you might want to finish writing the content before performing steps 8 and 9.
2/27/08: Made an edit to step 5 and added a note about it.
3/13/08: Additional note... If you're using a mix of the "Popup" <a> class and the custom <html> tag dimensions in your project, make sure you don't try to use them at the same time. For instance, assume PopupA has its <html> tag set to 400px by 500px and the <a class="Popup" ...> is set to dimensions of 300px by 400px. If you create a text hyperlink (e.g., "Click here to...") to PopupA and set the hyperlink to use the "Popup" class, then the text in the topic that contains that text hyperlink may get screwed up. In a test, where the end of the first line of text had a text hyperlink and the next line contained an image, there was a huge gap in the spacing. When I changed the text hyperlink to point to a different topic that didn't have a custom html tag, then there was no gap. So keep that in mind... Don't mix the effects in a text hyperlink.