Customize buttons?

[lannie]

How can I customize buttons in a skin? It appears that the .gifs are saved in the skin file as resources like

<Resource
Name="Forward.gif">R0lGODlhFwAWAMQTAOb8yZ3OX4zCRcjpnbPbfozDRbLcftr0t9n1t8jonMfondn0t7Pcfp3OYJ7OX7Lbfn+7M0RtGF9fX////wAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACH5BAEAABMALAAAAAAXABYAAAVY4CSOZGmeaKqubOu+kySNMiwBc4y/997nLAnisJANiy2JYpAYKJnO4IPAIBgiVGtkJXEEvo3INxDmCgrnyDkdhLgjEjdk257H3q44Xc+jx/wwgYKDhIUrIQA7</Resource>

I'm not familiar with this way of encoding a graphic. I can turn this resource into a .gif by building the WebHelp, but how can I turn a .gif into this text format?

[NorthEast]

You can select images for your buttons in the skin editor.

There's more info in the Flare help:
http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare ... _Items.htm

[lannie]

Yes, I see how to select images from among the images that are embedded in the skin. I don't see how to modify those images, or import new images.

[LTinker68]

The drop-down lists of images in the skin automatically look first in the Resources\Images folder of your project, although you can browse elsewhere for the images. When you save an image to the skin, the image is saved elsewhere than the Resources\Images folder, even if that's where you initially selected the image (don't ask me why). So if copied the image into the Resources\Images folder then selected it in the skin, then later modified the graphic and resaved it to the Resources\Images folder, you have to go back into the skin and reselect the image in the Resources\Images folder so that it can be resaved into the skin, even though the skin will look as though it's pointing to that image.

So for the skin, it doesn't really matter where your source file is stored -- once you select it for the skin, it's saved with the skin (sort of). You can't import images into the skin, so you have to select new and modified graphics one at a time in the appropriate fields of the skin.

[Paul Griffiths]

I'm guessing that MadCap are doing this so that everything about a skin is in the .flskn file?

Still not what you might expect, though.

[LTinker68]

To me, it would be more intuitive for it to reference images stored in your project instead of storing them in the flskn file, because when you generate the output, the images in the skin are separated out anyway and stored in the Skin folder, which means if you did store them in the Resources\Images folder so you always had a copy with the project, then you've in effect duplicated the images. Of course, you could always condition out the copies in the Resources\Images folder so you don't have duplicates, but it still seems like an odd way to do it to me. Especially since as an author you now have three or four extra steps you have to perform any time you modify an image and need to reload it in the skin, as opposed to just overwriting an image in the Resources\Images folder like you do with every other image you use in the project.

You might want to submit a feature request at http://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx asking MadCap to change the way they store/access images in the skin.

[lannie]

Got it, thanks. I had overlooked the [Browse for Image...] choice at the top of the image selection list. That lets me import the image from anywhere.