Map IDs for a VB application

[imahw09]

Hi there...

I'm tasked with creating context-sensitive HTML Help for a Visual Basic application. I tested a small sample of the help with the developer, and everything worked fine. Now, the developer is giving me more form names to link with the help, and I'm stuck. My understanding of how CSH works is that each form can have one map ID. The problem here is that some of the forms contain several tabs. When such a form is opened, the contents of the first tab is displayed by default. Users can click on a different tab to access the contents of that particular tab. To me, as a user, each tab is a form unto itself; however, in the code, all of the tabs have the same form name.

For example, I have a form for Widgets. There are tabs on that form for Screws, Bolts, and Pulleys. The developer has provided me with the following information in a spreadsheet:

frmWidgets.frm - Screws 3000
frmWidgets.frm - Bolts 3010
frmWidgets.frm - Pulleys 3020

(The text after the '.frm' is provided for my reference only.)

I don't understand what I need to do in the help for this to work if my premise of one map ID per form is correct. How do I set up the map IDs so the correct help topic will display for each tab?

Any and all help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Annette

[RamonS]

There is no mandate to have only one map ID per form. A form in VB is what user typically refer to as "window" (although there can be forms that do not create windows and thus are invisible, but I digress). The Help button and F1 key press (which may need to be intercepted rather than have the default handler take over) need to be tied to code so that on the Click event the active tab is detected and based on that the call to the ShowHelp routine (or whatever name the developer chose) gets fed the right map ID.
Each tab can have its own map ID associated and thus show its own help topic. If you use F1 help (or as I call it, 'real' CSH) you associate each UI element that can receive focus with a map ID. The handler for the key press then determines which element has currently focus and shows the help using the correct map ID. In this circumstance it is really nice to know that you can assign map IDs to bookmarks within a topic.

Honestly, this is programming 101, a developer should know this. I came across quite a few who did, but were too lazy to do the work. It is tedious work, but will help the end-user a lot.

[imahw09]

Thanks for correcting my premise. I understand what I need to do now.

Annette