I want to create breadcrumbs but I want to avoid using a master page. Does anyone know if I can do that?
The reason I want to avoid using a master page is that I'm not distributing my WebHelp as such but I'm distributing individual .htm files that link to each other. The reasons why are complicated. I want to avoid having a bunch of other files that I need to distribute along with my .htm files, and I want to minimize the required folders that need to be created to house these files.
Can I use breadcrumbs without a master page?
Re: Can I use breadcrumbs without a master page?
If you don't build a full output then the breadcrumbs won't resolve to anything, even if putting a breadcrumbProxy directly into a topic would work. And if you send individual files, the links wouldn't work anyway, because the files would all have to be in the same relative position to each other, so whomever you sent the files to would need to know exactly the folder structure you had in the project, at least within the content folder.
You'd have to hard-code hyperlinks in your topics to make them look like breadcrumbs, but again, even if you do that, you have to know exactly where the destination files will be stored relative to the topic containing the hyperlinks. If the destination topics will be on your web server, then it would be easy enough to point the hyperlinks to the website, but if the destination topics are on the user's computer, then that would be way more problematic.
You'd have to hard-code hyperlinks in your topics to make them look like breadcrumbs, but again, even if you do that, you have to know exactly where the destination files will be stored relative to the topic containing the hyperlinks. If the destination topics will be on your web server, then it would be easy enough to point the hyperlinks to the website, but if the destination topics are on the user's computer, then that would be way more problematic.
Lisa
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GregStenhouse
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Re: Can I use breadcrumbs without a master page?
Short answer is no, you can't have breadcrumbs without a master page (and TOC).
The good news is master pages are only used in the build process, you don't need to distribute them with your output. Go into the output folder and copy only the generated htm files, along with other relevant Content\Resources files (e.g. Stylesheet and images). You can also locate the stylesheet and images directly in your content folder, so in theory (if your files are very basic and you don't have any Madcap-specific things like autonums, popup effects, glossaries etc that need entries in Content\SkinSupport) you only need to distribute the one folder, or only one images subfolder, if that's your end goal.
Cheers
Greg
The good news is master pages are only used in the build process, you don't need to distribute them with your output. Go into the output folder and copy only the generated htm files, along with other relevant Content\Resources files (e.g. Stylesheet and images). You can also locate the stylesheet and images directly in your content folder, so in theory (if your files are very basic and you don't have any Madcap-specific things like autonums, popup effects, glossaries etc that need entries in Content\SkinSupport) you only need to distribute the one folder, or only one images subfolder, if that's your end goal.
Cheers
Greg