Is topnav a good idea, friendly user?

[StraygoatWriting]

I prefer to use Flare's built in menu too...I just wish they had implemented it more like your way of doing it. Something like, build toc > to give you the ul list and then an interface for applying different menu styles (so less need for the extra hassle of plug-ins and other CSS menus). To get what my clients want out of Flare, I find I'm having to become more of a web developer than a tech writer. While I don't mind learning that, I can't help feel that it is unnecessary - with more user interfaces for the CSS and built in scripts, we could focus more on creating content.

Anyway, good to share views as usual.

[sdcinvan]

FYI,

There is a webinar coming up on the new topnav feature: https://www.madcapsoftware.com/demos/si ... 408Webinar

If you miss it, don't worry, MadCap records all their webinars for download. Thank you MadCap!

Some details:
Case Study: Goodbye Tripane, Hello Frameless Top Navigation Web Output

Time: April 22, 2015 8:00 am Pacific Standard Time (UTC-07:00)
Presenter: Paul Stoecklein, Documentation Manager | MadCap Software, Inc.

MadCap Flare’s new frameless Top Navigation output for HTML5 changes the landscape for online documentation, freeing you from the limitations of the traditional tripane format. In this webinar, Paul Stoecklein, Documentation Manager at MadCap Software, will describe this new type of output and discuss why it’s a big deal for content developers. Mr. Stoecklein will demonstrate how to perform a simple conversion from tripane to frameless Top Navigation in less than a minute. And finally, he will take you through the detailed steps he followed to convert Flare’s online documentation from tripane to Top Navigation with a fancy new homepage and context-sensitive menus. Paul will also include tips, tricks, and lessons learned along the way.

Did anyone see this webinar? If not, fear not, MadCap records all their webinars. This was an exceptional webinar explaining how to use the new topnav feature (and even a little bit about Global Project Linking). I highly recommend that you watch the recording, when it becomes available later today.

Major kudos to Paul Stoecklein and MadCap for another excellent production!

[ruthhoward]

BedfordWriter,
You can create a topic and insert an Index Proxy in it and it will populate with your entire index. This can be added to the TOC for easy access by users.
Just be sure in the project CSS that you edit the MadCap|indexProxy style mc-output-support to equal ALL so it will work in web outputs.

I tried putting an indexProxy in my masterpage but even with MadCap|indexProxy {mc-output-support :all;} in my CSS it didn't show up in all topics - only in a topic which also had the indexProxy directly in its body - in which case it appeared twice of course.

see here for more on what I'm trying to achieve:
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=27772&p=122303#p122303

[BedfordWriter]

Different altogether. The other thread looks like you want an HTML5 Tripane output. TopNav isn't going to give you a navigation pane. You could try to fudge one by adding the index proxy to every topic, or by doing something fancy with some Javascript in the master page that will do an Include. Put it into a div that will push it to a sidebar. But, hopefully your project is tiny if you're doing this. My index page runs to 1,403k If that was visible in every topic, my TopNav output would be in the gigabytes.

Can't think of much to suggest to help with the Tripane problem from the other thread. Have you tried building a fresh Tripane project and importing a few of the topic files? It's not an output that I use, but from the documentation, you should just get a navigation pane with an index.

[ruthhoward]

Different altogether. The other thread looks like you want an HTML5 Tripane output. TopNav isn't going to give you a navigation pane. You could try to fudge one by adding the index proxy to every topic, or by doing something fancy with some Javascript in the master page that will do an Include. Put it into a div that will push it to a sidebar. But, hopefully your project is tiny if you're doing this. My index page runs to 1,403k If that was visible in every topic, my TopNav output would be in the gigabytes.

Can't think of much to suggest to help with the Tripane problem from the other thread. Have you tried building a fresh Tripane project and importing a few of the topic files? It's not an output that I use, but from the documentation, you should just get a navigation pane with an index.

I'm converting away from Tripane because it uses queries (?) or references (#) in the URL to topics and this fails on FILE protocol in Windows 10 with Edge and Chrome (we are locked to FILE protocol). I must use Responsive because that embeds all the navigational everything into every topic (whether using this custom masterpage-based implementation or the standard way) and allows each topic to be access on an absolute path. I tried to persuade PM to use the default responsive skin but they are determined that a visible TOC is required at all times. Hence using the StrayGoat solution - originally developed by Dave Lee I believe.

for the Windows 10 issue see
https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/2578 ... mmand-line

[StraygoatWriting]

Yes, that's right Ruth - I knew what I needed to create, tried it, ran into problems, so hired Dave to work his magic on it. There were a few things to iron out after that, such as the support for iOS, but nothing too major. I'd be interested to find out about your experiences with it, in case there are other issues I've not experienced personally. My client went back to using the smartmenus solution because of the iOS issue, but now it is fixed, I'm hoping they will adopt Foundation menus.

[ruthhoward]

Yes, that's right Ruth - I knew what I needed to create, tried it, ran into problems, so hired Dave to work his magic on it. There were a few things to iron out after that, such as the support for iOS, but nothing too major. I'd be interested to find out about your experiences with it, in case there are other issues I've not experienced personally. My client went back to using the smartmenus solution because of the iOS issue, but now it is fixed, I'm hoping they will adopt Foundation menus.

see the linked thread above for what I've got so far. I've added a topic toolbar too (using a div, not the Flare skin for it)

PM me if you want the full list of all the changes I made.

[NorthEast]

If you just need a visible TOC in top nav, you can simply insert a menu proxy in your master page.
The menu proxy will show the full TOC, if you don't use the Context Sensitive option.

The work I did with Craig (Straygoat) just takes that generated menu proxy, and converts it from being a plain list to a more dynamic menu control (accordion and drilldown).

[ruthhoward]

If you just need a visible TOC in top nav, you can simply insert a menu proxy in your master page.
The menu proxy will show the full TOC, if you don't use the Context Sensitive option.

The work I did with Craig (Straygoat) just takes that generated menu proxy, and converts it from being a plain list to a more dynamic menu control (accordion and drilldown).

that's working beautifully thanks, its getting the index in that's causing a headache