Adding "Home" link to breadcrumbs

[LesNoiz]

Hi,

I want to add a "Home" link to the start of the breadcrumbs. I added the following to the mc-breadcrumbs-prefix property of the MadCap | breadcrumbsProxy:
<a href="../../../index.htm">>Home > </a>

However, Flare recognizes the strings as text only, resulting in the following in the output HTML:
<span class="MCBreadcrumbsPrefix"><a href="../../../index.htm">>Home &gt;</a>

Which of course renders in the output as:
<a href="../../../index.htm">>Home ></a>

Is there any way to quote the string or escape the offending characters to make this work? Any other suggestions?

[LTinker68]

I did something similar. The way I did it was to create a new masterpage for the "root" topics (the ones at the top level of the TOC) and manually created a "Home" link that looks the same as how it would look in the breadcrumb trail. I then apply that masterpage just to those top-level topics. All other topics use the default masterpage, which includes a real breadcrumb proxy.

[i-tietz]

You could try adding that link to the masterpage, insert it before the breadcrumb proxy, make it look like the breadcrumb links if you want to and set its "float" to "left".

[LesNoiz]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll probably do what Inge suggests. It's a shame that Flare doesn't provide this functionality built in, a Home link is pretty standard stuff for breadcrumbs. It's starting to get hard to keep track of all of these workarounds

[NorthEast]

Bear in mind the breadcrumbs just reflect your TOC structure; so if you want the 'home' topic to be at the root of your breadcrumbs, just put it as a book topic at the root of your TOC.

[LTinker68]

Bear in mind the breadcrumbs just reflect your TOC structure; so if you want the 'home' topic to be at the root of your breadcrumbs, just put it as a book topic at the root of your TOC.

I thought of doing that, but having a "Home" book at the root with nothing else looked kind of ridiculous. That's one click your users are going to have to do just to see all the child books and topics, and its only purpose is so the breadcrumb proxy works. I found it better all around to manually add the link, although I didn't think to do it Inge's way.

[i-tietz]

Bear in mind the breadcrumbs just reflect your TOC structure; so if you want the 'home' topic to be at the root of your breadcrumbs, just put it as a book topic at the root of your TOC.

I thought of doing that, but having a "Home" book at the root with nothing else looked kind of ridiculous. That's one click your users are going to have to do just to see all the child books and topics, and its only purpose is so the breadcrumb proxy works.

Couldn't you generate a topic redirecting to the "real" starting topic, then generate a book at top level and link the redirecting topic to it?
The "real" starting topic is at second TOC level and if you auto-sync the topic with the TOC ... actually that should work, right? Anything escaped my attention there?

[LTinker68]

But you still have an extra level in the TOC, so all your child books and topics are shifted one step to the right, which means what would normally be a third-level book/topic is now four levels deep, which makes it that much closer to the dividing bar on the nav pane, although you could always widen the nav pane, but that takes away from the topic pane area.

To me, having a single book at the top level that contains all the other content is like having a list with a single list item -- why bother make it a list at all.

Plus, that single top-level book would knock everything down in PDF output if you have "Use TOC depth..." enabled.

Or did I misunderstand what you wrote, Inge? It sounded like you were still suggesting a top-level book ("Home") that contained all the content.

[i-tietz]

For PDF you would need a different TOC, true.
But you don't want breadcrumbs in a PDF, right? And no auto-sync either ...

And concerning size of windows: I'm a fan of leaving it to the user instead of using a fixed size all the time. Means that the user will care for his settings himself.
And with current screen resolutions even a wider TOC will still give you more than enough space for the text, especially considering the fact that text in lines that have more than about 70 letters is hard to read, because coming back from the end of one line it's difficult to find the beginning of the next line.
off topic: Why do you think newspapers have so many columns? The biggest newspaper in Germany is a tabloid one. It has 7 columns on each page. The most "sophisticated" (even sniffy) newspaper I know, has 5 columns ... it asks more of its readers, because it's more difficult to read than the tabloid one.

[NorthEast]

Bear in mind the breadcrumbs just reflect your TOC structure; so if you want the 'home' topic to be at the root of your breadcrumbs, just put it as a book topic at the root of your TOC.

I thought of doing that, but having a "Home" book at the root with nothing else looked kind of ridiculous. That's one click your users are going to have to do just to see all the child books and topics, and its only purpose is so the breadcrumb proxy works. I found it better all around to manually add the link, although I didn't think to do it Inge's way.

Yep, I know the contents pane would look a bit odd.

I guess a lot depends on how you expect people to navigate your help; if navigation using breadcrumbs and mini-TOCs (especially) is important, then your 'home' topic needs to be at the root of your TOC.

If you have a fake 'home' breadcrumb link, then I think it has its own issues too, for example:
- Would the 'home' topic be included in the TOC itself, and if so where? (since it's not actually at the root)
- The 'home' topic couldn't really use either a mini-TOC or breadcrumbs, as the navigation paths would be inconsistent.

[LTinker68]

- Would the 'home' topic be included in the TOC itself, and if so where? (since it's not actually at the root)

In my case, the "Home" link only shows up on topics at the root of the help. It's a manually-inserted hyperlink in a masterpage that points to the "welcome" topic. I chose not to include that link on second-level or lower topics because some topic titles are fairly long and I didn't want the breadcrumb proxy to wrap to the next line. If the user narrows their help window it will do that, obviously, but less chance of that in normal operation. Plus I figured if the user clicked the first item in the breadcrumb, that would take them back to the root-level topic, which would have the Home link on it. An extra step, but minor.

- The 'home' topic couldn't really use either a mini-TOC or breadcrumbs, as the navigation paths would be inconsistent.

That would depend on how you have it set up. I actually do have a "Welcome" book at the top level that contains the "welcome" (landing page) topic, a "Who should read this help" topic, and a "How to use this help" (only for online output) topic. So the "home" page is the "welcome" page, which has a short intro, and a mini-TOC pointing to the two topics in that book. The "welcome" topic actually has nothing in the breadcrumb trail area and its children topics have "Welcome" in the breadcrumb trail. It's only the "Welcome" book's sibling books that have the "Home" link in lieu of a real breadcrumb trail. Each of those book's children topics have a normal breadcrumb trail, which doesn't include the "Home" link.

That's how I have it set up anyway. I'd rather set up more work on my end initially than to have the users have to click on one top-level book that's only there to make the breadcrumbs work.