Flare in Action!

[doc_guy]

Dave, I LOVE your output. That looks AWESOME. Does it work in all browsers? Is the MINI-TOC in a DIV? Do you do printed output, and how does it look in printed output (PDF)?

[Dave Lee]

Dave, I LOVE your output. That looks AWESOME. Does it work in all browsers? Is the MINI-TOC in a DIV? Do you do printed output, and how does it look in printed output (PDF)?

Yep, it works in all browsers. The miniTOC isn't in a div, I just set all the styles in MadCap|miniTocProxy - that sets the border, background, floats it on the right, and the "In this section text" and icon is added using an autonumber format (and class). The topic icons next to the links are set using in the p.MiniTOC1 style.

I use a div for the "See also" box underneath, which is in the topic itself. It uses the same styles, and again the heading and icon are put in using an autonumber format.

It should work in print, but Flare has a few issues with the float right property (it seems to effect other styles on the page to the left of the box, like list numbers not displaying). So in practice I can't use the float property in print, which is a bit annoying.

[doc_guy]

How did you get a custom topic to appear when a search was done?

[Dave Lee]

How did you get a custom topic to appear when a search was done?

It's an option in the CSH, e.g. for the URL method you'd pass the search term and the identifier of the topic to display - Help_CSH.htm?<search term>#<identifier>

[doc_guy]

So that topic doesn't shop up if users click the "Search" accordion bar? Only if they click a search link that you've set up with CSH?

[Dave Lee]

So that topic doesn't shop up if users click the "Search" accordion bar? Only if they click a search link that you've set up with CSH?

Yep, that's right.

(I don't use a search 'link' as such though, the application has a search box on the toolbar which makes the CSH call.)

[Lucia]

Dave,

When you say

The background image is set in a master page, using a body class. The master page contains a div tag (set to be semi-transparent), and this div contains the topic body. Then I just set any 'special' topics to use this master page.

1. Copy and paste these styles into your stylesheet.

Code: Select all

html.startPage
{
   mc-master-page: url('../MasterPages/Start.flmsp');
}

body.startPage
{
   margin-top: 0px;
   margin-bottom: 0px;
   margin-left: 0px;
   margin-right: 0px;
   background-image: url('../Images/StartBackground.png');
   background-position: left bottom;
   background-repeat: no-repeat;
   background-attachment: fixed;
}

div.startPage
{
   background-color: #ffffff;
   filter: alpha(opacity=95);
   opacity: 0.95;
   padding-left: 10px;
   padding-right: 10px;
   padding-top: 10px;
   padding-bottom: 10px;
   border-color: #c0c0c0;
   border-width: 1px;
   border-style: solid;
   width: 85%;
   margin-left: 5%;
   margin-top: 5%;
   margin-right: 5%;
}

where exactly do you mean to paste this code?

Thank you very much

[Dave Lee]

where exactly do you mean to paste this code?

In your stylesheet (CSS file).
You need to open it in the text editor, i.e. right-click the file and select Open with > Internal text editor.

[Lucia]

Thanks a lot, Dave, it worked

[nfberg]

Or first Help for our first product, still very much a work in progress...but I'm getting there.

http://www.drivethruonline.com/help/dto ... index.html

[pdxwordsmith]

I'm interested in how to accomplish the Next Topic/Previous Topic in this example. Anyone?

Palo Alto Software

Check out another Great Examples of Flare in Action at

http://www.hurdlebook.com/

Thanks to Sara@PAS

[RamonS]

Either a lot of manual work or some scripting that reads the index for each page and crafts the buttons. I looked at the page source, but I have no clue about ECMAScript, so I cannot tell.

[nfberg]

I'm interested in how to accomplish the Next Topic/Previous Topic in this example. Anyone?

Palo Alto Software

Check out another Great Examples of Flare in Action at

http://www.hurdlebook.com/

Thanks to Sara@PAS

We mimicked them in our projects.

After scraping the buttons from the site we modified them in an image editor to match our look and feel.

To place them we used a table then insert the buttons and finally link them by hand. Quite a bit of work in a big project but since we have small projects with limited numbers of topics it's not bad.

I tried going the snippet route with the table and found that I could not create the unique links each button requires.

Code Example:

Code: Select all

<table style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: 0;">
            <tbody>
                <tr MadCap:conditions="dto_conditions.Admin">
                    <td><a href="../1_Administrator/vbseo.htm"><img src="../Resources/Images/Previous_Page_button.png" /></a>
                    </td>
                    <td><a href="bbcode.htm"><img src="../Resources/Images/Next_Page_button.png" /></a>
                    </td>
                </tr>
            </tbody>
        </table>

[LTinker68]

I tried going the snippet route with the table and found that I could not create the unique links each button requires.

Do you mean the link changes every time, or do you mean the path to the link? If you create a snippet and it points to an image file, then it doesn't matter where the topic you insert the snippet into is located because the snippet contains the path information to the graphic; the topic itself doesn't hold the info, so it doesn't matter if the topic is in the root folder or one folder deep or five folders deep (although I wouldn't create a folder system that deep).

[nfberg]

I tried to create both the previous and next links to the snippet and found I could not easily add two hyperlinks in the correct area. I did not creating an image out of the snippet. This is somethign I can try to do when i have some more time.

[beagley]

Whoops. Posted a new thread and then found this one. Eeep.
Anyway:

My company's Flare Web Help is now alive and online:

http://learn.pcc.com/

Comments and critiques are heartily devoured!

All the best,
Douglas

[Robotman]

It's been a while since some new flare in action sites have popped up - anymore available that can be shown to the public?
(unfortunately our company can't)

[Eric Lachance]

I'm fairly proud of my own, which took me (alone) about a month to write from scratch for a brand new software (which, incidentally, only took 3 months to build by our dev. team). The theme was kept as-is due to time constraints, but the colours fit with the software anyway so it's not that big of a deal.

The documentation itself is available at http://www.objectiflune.com/Documentati ... ser-guide/

The software itself is http://www.ppenvelopenow.com/ . I would have like the doc to be on the same domain but time was limited.

[giri2010]

Dave, I am new to Flare (started off with version 6) and was going through the forum when I found this excellent piece. I am unable to add the "In this section text" - should this be part of the autonumber format in MadCap|miniTocProxy? If so I don't see it in the output. Or do I need to create an autoformat class? I don't have any HTML knowledege so would appreciate it if you can share the code (and steps) I would need to get the "In this section" part.

Thanks!
Giri

Dave, I LOVE your output. That looks AWESOME. Does it work in all browsers? Is the MINI-TOC in a DIV? Do you do printed output, and how does it look in printed output (PDF)?

Yep, it works in all browsers. The miniTOC isn't in a div, I just set all the styles in MadCap|miniTocProxy - that sets the border, background, floats it on the right, and the "In this section text" and icon is added using an autonumber format (and class). The topic icons next to the links are set using in the p.MiniTOC1 style.

I use a div for the "See also" box underneath, which is in the topic itself. It uses the same styles, and again the heading and icon are put in using an autonumber format.

It should work in print, but Flare has a few issues with the float right property (it seems to effect other styles on the page to the left of the box, like list numbers not displaying). So in practice I can't use the float property in print, which is a bit annoying.

[Dave Lee]

Dave, I am new to Flare (started off with version 6) and was going through the forum when I found this excellent piece. I am unable to add the "In this section text" - should this be part of the autonumber format in MadCap|miniTocProxy? If so I don't see it in the output. Or do I need to create an autoformat class? I don't have any HTML knowledege so would appreciate it if you can share the code (and steps) I would need to get the "In this section" part.

Thanks!
Giri

Yes, it's an autonumber format, but I couldn't get it to work for the MadCap|miniTocProxy style - Flare doesn't seem to copy any autonumber properties through into the output.

I added it by setting it on the style used by Flare for the mini-TOC in the generated output - div.MCMiniTocBox.

Code: Select all

div.MCMiniTocBox
{
   mc-auto-number-format: 'In this section';
}

[stephencavers]

This is my first web help site built using Flare 6. It's pretty vanilla-flavoured but it all works, as far as I know. There is also a toolbar link to a PDF version of the same guide, which also generated using Flare.

http://www.sparkintegration.com/systembuildermanual/

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with Flare.

[SteveS]

Well done, and welcome to the forums!

Couldn't see the link to the pdf...

Nothing wrong with vanilla, I like a simple system. The last thing you want to do is distract the user from the content with too much eye candy.

[GregStenhouse]

This is my first web help site built using Flare 6. It's pretty vanilla-flavoured but it all works, as far as I know. There is also a toolbar link to a PDF version of the same guide, which also generated using Flare.

http://www.sparkintegration.com/systembuildermanual/

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with Flare.

I really like it, nice work! Thanks for posting

[th3el]

My web-developer incorporated my Flare projects into this website, which has just gone live and is entering Stage-2 development.

http://thee-online.com

The main Flare project is reached by clicking on The Hub or Frameworks.
(It requires registration to get access. Sorry about that. But the process is as painless as we could make it.)

I appreciate the tolerance for my crass ignorance and ineptitude that was shown by the MadCap support staff who have been and are unfailingly helpful and polite. It wouldn't have happened without them.

WarrenK@th3el.com

[Paul Griffiths]

Warren, it looks terrific! You seem to have taken the Flare output and super-charged it. Well done.