Displaying right-arrow character

[TechWtr29]

Many procedural steps begin something like:
From the Start menu, select Company -> Product Family -> Tool

I don't think the two characters -> look nearly as clean as a right arrow. But, I haven't been able to figure out a good way to enter a right-arrow from the Flare wysiwyg editor. Can anyone tell me if you incorporate right-arrows into your instructions, and how you get the character to display?

[Andrew]

We typically use a simply greater than symbol; for example:

1. Open the Order Entry window (Orders > Order Processing > Order Entry).

[LTinker68]

According to the two sites below, there are some special characters you can use for a more arrow-looking character, although I've never tried them personally. The second sites has a couple of different arrow designs.

http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/02/special_characters/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_XM ... es_in_HTML

[TechWtr29]

I can get a right-arrow in → in xml, html or even MS-Word without too much difficulty. If I use another tool to edit the .htm and insert an arrow that displays in the browser, Flare converts it to some garbage character the next time I open the file there. I agree that you can use a greater-than sign. But, this substitute for a true → makes the final document look less professional and clean.

[OmNuKu]

I'm not really sure why it worked the way I tried this, but I just copied + pasted the right-arrow out of Lisa's wiki-link into one of my topics.

this is how it looks in the xml-editor:

xml-editor.jpg

this in the text-editor:

text-editor.jpg

and this in my chm-output:

chm-output.jpg

Marcus

[Andrew]

Go here:
http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/html/ ... /arrow.htm

Enter the numbered entity for your character in a text editor in your Flare htm files. That will do the trick. I just tested it.

[LTinker68]

I'll have to add that link to my list. Make sure you test it across all browser types your users may be using. Not all of the references I've come across have listed all of those named entities, so they may not be supported by all browsers, and they may not translate to Word or PDF outputs either. Unless you tried that, Andrew?

[Andrew]

I'll have to add that link to my list. Make sure you test it across all browser types your users may be using. Not all of the references I've come across have listed all of those named entities, so they may not be supported by all browsers, and they may not translate to Word or PDF outputs either. Unless you tried that, Andrew?

That's an excellent point, Lisa. The project I'm using that in is, for the moment, WebHelp-only, so I haven't tested PDF or Word at all. It works in IE, Firefox, and Chrome.

Just threw together a super-quick test in PDF and Word outputs, and the arrows show up exactly as I hoped. Whew!

[LTinker68]

Rather surprised Word didn't balk. Glad it works.

[Andrew]

Bear in mind that's Word 2007. So it might not go so smooth for someone using 2003 or lower.