Auto Expanding Dropdowns

[tomlowe]

I have searched high and low and many topics refer in part to my query so apologies if this has already been covered...

I wish to know if there is a way to have my dropdowns to auto expand when clicked on in TOC, it expands on the first click but if I click in another dropdown held within the same topic, it moves to the appropriate place in that topic but the dropdown remains compressed/collapsed.

I hope this makes sense to someone, any suggestions would be gratefully received.

[kwag_myers]

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to do, but I think you want to add Expand All to the Toolbar for TOC entries and to the Local Toolbar for topics, such as drop-down text.

[Lydia]

Does the TOC link to bookmarks? If yes, are these located in the header or body of the dropdown? I thought, that if they are in the body, the text will be expanded. I haven't tested this recently, but it would be easy to try.

[tomlowe]

Thank you for your responses, I am referring to the TOC entry, clicking on a sub topic, a header bookmarked within a topic, it will go to the appropriate area of the topic but doesn't open the dropdown. Yet if I click on a sub topic directly it opens or if I click on an index item then the topic opens.

I am just testing the putting to the bookmark into the dropdown body, bit of a shame to do this as the TOC will take them to the bookmark and not to the header.

Anything I am missing? thought it would be something someone has tried/done before, I have a large manual so have utilised the dropdowns to condense each sub section of a topic, then when they access the sections within the TOC I would hope it would expand without any need to click on the header.

[Msquared]

This may not help you, but I've just started using drop-downs heavily, and I'm feeling a bit flushed with my own drop-down successes (I worked out how to expand drop-downs that are the target of hyperlinks yesterday!) so here's what I'm doing.

I'm not referencing any of the drop-down content in the TOC at all. I just have one link to the topic itself. Then once the user gets to the topic, the drop-downs are all they need to use. I have ensured that the topic itself just consists of a small number of drop-downs (with nesting if necessary) when it is opened. So, in my opinion, for my usage, listing sub-topics as bookmarks isn't necessary.

If you really want to include the drop-downs in the TOC, then the approach I used may work for you, see http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... =12&t=6957. I insert a (almost but not quite) hidden bookmark at the start of the drop-down body (yes, you are correct, @Lydia), and reference that in my hyperlink. That works perfectly - the section opens when it is referenced, from a link in the same topic, or in a different topic. Could you do something similar by setting up bookmarks like that in your content and adding links to those in your TOC instead?

I'm assuming that you aren't single sourcing PDF content from the same TOC, as I think having multiple references in the TOC to the same topic may muck up the PDF bookmarks? That's another reason why I only link to topics, not bookmarks in topics, in my TOC - my WebHelp is also a PDF.

[tomlowe]

Many thanks for the input, I have decided to follow your lead, making the TOC's the top level contents and utilising dropdowns throughout meaning the user can see all the 2nd Tier Headers. I have also added in some hyperlinked Content topics (as these do auto expand) kind of creating a TOC topic.

Still a shame that we cannot adjust the behaviour of clicking on a topic itself but think the user can access the content quickly which is the point.

Once again thank you