Linking to non-frame based TOC from Topic Tool Bar

[jgoldstein]

I'm working on creating a flavor of my help system that doesn't include the navigation pane, but accesses a TOC and Index from custom buttons in a Topic Toolbar. I want to be able to integrate the online help system (and other documents) into our corporate website but because of the way the corporate website is designed, I can't have the tri-pane setup. So, I'm experimenting with using the Topic Toolbar as my "navigation pane."

I tried creating a new topic and adding the TOC proxy, but quickly realized that since all of my help topics start with <h1> tags, I don't get a hierarchical display in my TOC page. I could add a bunch of h1 classes to deal with this and then use a separate medium to get the correct output, but that's a bit time consuming.

I was wondering...does anyone know if there is some way to link to the TOC that Flare generates for the navigation panel (which is automatically formatted with the right structure) without using the frameset?

[lacastle]

have you looked at the webhelp mobile output? (i don't use it, but i don't think it has frames.)
http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare ... Output.htm

[jgoldstein]

Ah, good suggestion. Not sure why I discounted it originally, but it might do what I want.

[LTinker68]

Ah, good suggestion. Not sure why I discounted it originally, but it might do what I want.

You might lose some of the other features, though. I don't build Mobile output, but it strips out a lot of features, I think, since there's either not enough real estate to support them or they add too much overhead.

One thing to point out that you might not have thought of... If you succeed in incorporating Flare into your corporate website, you'll have to seriously think about some of Flare's features. For example, search, indexing, glossary, etc. The reason being is that if your users have access to a search in part of your website but not other parts, or if the search seems to find results for only a few areas but not the whole site and so on, then you're going to confuse your users and alienate them. In other words, your users won't know that the sections of the corporate site that are part of the help system aren't tied to the rest of the corporate site. They'll just know that if you go to this particular page on the site you'll get a search feature, but it doesn't return results from the whole website, just parts of it. Likewise with how the index behaves. And there's a glossary, but it doesn't define the term found on this page but it does have the term found on this page.

My suggestion is to either put your corporate site into the Flare project and have Flare generate the whole thing, or don't try to incorporate your help into the main corporate site at all. Make it distinct enough that users can tell it's a separate site (http://www.yoursite.com and help.yoursite.com, for example), but still have some of the branding to tie it to your company. You can always include a link to the main corporate website. Similar to how mobile sites have a "Go to main website" or something like that.

[jgoldstein]

Yup, all good points. Thanks for the thoughts.

I'm discovering that the Mobile output would require a heck of a lot of customization (and I am not a Javascript guru) to produce anything that's useful.

Essentially, what I want is to be able to do is use a single source to deliver in PDF, WebHelp and in some sort of "edoc library." It's something that most of our competitors aer doing and we really should be doing it as well (I'd like to ditch the PDF but we do get requests for them, so I guess I need to keep them for now).

Putting the corporate website into Flare is never going to happen and it doesn't make sense for us to do so. But, I need to ponder the idea of trying to create a separate wesite with just the edoc library.

[LTinker68]

Putting the corporate website into Flare is never going to happen and it doesn't make sense for us to do so.

Agreed. Most corporate sites serve a different purpose than help sites, but if there's a mandate to combine them, better to do it from within Flare, IMHO, unless you don't include the search, index, favorites, glossary, etc. The search feature can be handled by a third-part app or site (e.g., Search by Google) or options built into the web server. The glossary can fairly easily be recreated outside of Flare. Indexing would be problematic, unless there's a way to tie into the indexing done by the web server search app.

But, I need to ponder the idea of trying to create a separate wesite with just the edoc library.

By far the easiest option, but it doesn't have to stop there. Do you have a knowledgebase on your corporate site? If not, you could combine your edoc library with a KB site.