Reproducing Madcap Help Start Page

[Horchata]

I find the layout and look&feel of FlareHelp nice & cool especially the start page but I think they should explain more how they do it.
For example, I could not find any explanation on how to create a dynamic pane for the application I am documenting.
How are these dynamic panes embedded in applications in general actually?
How can I create a dynamic pane to display on the start page of my project?, how can I reproduce the same start page layout?
thanks

[lacastle]

What do you mean by dynamic pane?
-the left pane with the accordion items is standard in webhelp. you set those options in the skin editor
-the breadcrumbs at the top of each topic. you set those with MasterPages.

[Horchata]

A dynamic pane is a help pane following user's action in the application. There is in madcap help a dynamic pane located on the right hand side that you can close or open as you wish while surfing the help.

[lacastle]

That's something that is built in to the Flare software; I don't think it necessarily has anything to do with the help that we can create with Flare. I think it would have to be programmed by developers and then linked to a help file some way (maybe context-sensitive help?).

[LTinker68]

If you use the DotNetHelp SDK to embed DotNetHelp in your .NET application then you might get that capability, but I don't use DotNetHelp so I haven't researched what the SDK gives you. However, even if the SDK doesn't provide the capability, I would think your application could. You'd basically just need to make a CSH call when each page loads. But again, that's for embedded DotNetHelp.

WebHelp has no such capabilities natively, although your programmers might be able to simulate it. You create a skin without the nav pane and toolbar (if desired) and your programmers add a frame to your application that makes a call to the help with that skin.

[Mike Hamilton]

Lisa is spot on.

What you are seeing in the Flare interface is the Dynamic Help options available from the DotNetHelp SDK (in the downloads section of our web site).

If you wanted similer functionality in your application using WebHelp it could be done. The steps would be:
1. Set up the context sensitive topic IDs and map numbers
2. The developers could embed an I-Frame in their application
3. The help topics from WebHelp would be called into the I-Frame using standard CSH calls
4. HOWEVER: The way those CSH calls would be made would be different. Instead of waiting for someone to click a help icon, have the developers automatically send the CSH call whenver the focus changes to a new area in the application.

I hope that this helps,

Mike