Skin Customization - Control Types

[chunkee]

Hello,
We are customizing the skin with branding and changing the buttons. We have added a "Home" button on the toolbar of the webhelp. We would like to have this point to a specific URL and open inside the browser display and not a child window. Can someone please explain the process of implementing custom control types?

Thank you.

JC

[NorthEast]

Is the URL inside or outside of your help?
I'm just asking because the home button will open the topic set as the Startup Topic in the target (General tab). So if you want the home to jump to a topic in your project, set that topic as the startup.

If you want the home button to open a different URL, that is possible, but your users may be confused why the home button does not take them to the 'home' (or start page) of the help. If it is for something like displaying your company website, then I'd suggest leaving the Home button as it is, and adding a new button for the link.

Anyway, to set up a toolbar button to open a URL:

1) Open the skin Styles tab, select the ToolbarItem group, then select the button you want to edit. (To add a new button, right-click and Add Class).
2) In the properties panel, set the ControlType to Button, and for the OnClick action you need to enter some javascript code to open the URL.

For example, this code will open the URL (for Madcap's website) in the WebHelp body frame (the topic pane).

Code: Select all

parent.frames["body"].location=('http://www.madcapsoftware.com');

[lacastle]

It is explained in this help topic, step 5 - http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare ... Output.htm

[NorthEast]

It is explained in this help topic, step 5 - http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare ... Output.htm

Most of those steps are correct, but the example javascript would open the URL in a new browser window; you would need to use the script example I gave above to get it to open the URL in the topic pane of the same window.

[chunkee]

thank you everyone. we shall give it a shot.

[chunkee]

How about linking the button to a specific topic in the project?

[NorthEast]

How about linking the button to a specific topic in the project?

Would this not work?

the home button will open the topic set as the Startup Topic in the target (General tab). So if you want the home to jump to a topic in your project, set that topic as the startup.

Or if you want to display a topic that is different to the startup topic, then just use the code above with the relative path to the topic.