Togglers and drop-downs

[tbean]

Question #1: What, precisely, is the difference between togglers and drop-downs?
-- The effects seem very much the same to me when I read the Flare help and click on the examples there. What am I missing?
-- I know that they are created differently.
-- Can one be used in situations where another can't? (see next question)

Question #2: Does a drop-down have to be inserted within a paragraph tag? <p+></p>
-- XML is not yet my friend. We're still just acquaintances, so if the explanation involves XML-speak, please go gently
TIA,
Tracey

[KevinDAmery]

1) They basically do the same job. The one big difference is that a toggler can be set up to reveal or conceal many different pieces of content whereas a dropdown only works with the content within its own tag blocks. For example, Lisa has explained in other posts how she uses one toggler to expand / collapse all of the images in a topic at once, which could be handy if you have a lot of them in one topic.

2) No--dropdowns can contain multiple paragraphs, lists, tables, you name it. Sometimes getting them set up is a little finicky if you're using multiple blocks, but they support any quantity or type of content.

[tbean]

Thanks, Kevin.

I think the lightbulb turned on, at least momentarily. So, the strength of a toggler is that, for your toggler-revealed text, you can select multiple named elements from that lovely "manage named elements" list, and that they can be anywhere in the topic with respect to the toggler hotspot and to each other.

The beauty of the drop-down is that it is quick and easy to set up.

Next problem:
1. I insert a snippet block, which consists of a two-column table, into my topic. I want this snippet to be the toggler-revealed text.
2. I select the snippetBlock bar and turned it into a Named Element. I see the yellow flag immediately above the first row of the table.
3. I select my hotspot text, gone to Insert>Toggler, selected my target, selected the default toggler class, and clicked OK.
4. If I right-click the toggler hotspot icon, my named element is displayed as the target.
5. Now... I go to Topic Preview. The toggler hotspot appears as a link with the arrow next to it. The toggler-revealed text is revealed by default. Clicking the toggler hotspot does not hide it. Same thing when I build the project. I'm not getting any errors when I build the project.

Back in my topic: If I go to the Managed Named Elements box, the text field is empty for my named element, but if I select it and click "Go to", then the entire snippetblock table is selected. However, when I select "reveal tags", and then select the named element, only the opening tag and the flag are selected, not the entire snippet block.

I'm obviously doing something wrong. Any suggestions?

And my other dilemma: When I try to create a drop-down effect within a list, the Drop-Down option on the Insert menu is disabled. Why is this?

Thanks for any and all help rendered!

[LTinker68]

5. Now... I go to Topic Preview. The toggler hotspot appears as a link with the arrow next to it. The toggler-revealed text is revealed by default. Clicking the toggler hotspot does not hide it. Same thing when I build the project. I'm not getting any errors when I build the project.

Nope, you're not doing anything wrong. There appears to be a bug with using snippet blocks inside togglers, at least, when setting it up the way you expect to be able to set it up. I couldn't get it to work either, until I put the snippet block inside a div and then named the div.

So...

1. Type the text to act as the toggler.
2. Click the indent icon in the toolbar.
3. Select DIV from the screen that appears and click OK.
4. Go to Insert > Snippet.
5. Select the snippet you want and click OK.
6. Right-click on the DIV block and name it.
7. Select the text to act as the toggler, click Insert > Toggler, select the named element, then click OK.

The toggler will work in the Preview and the output.

[LTinker68]

And my other dilemma: When I try to create a drop-down effect within a list, the Drop-Down option on the Insert menu is disabled. Why is this?

For some reason, Flare doesn't like you trying to apply a drop-down effect to a list. You can still do it, but you have to do it in a specific sequence.

1. If the line item is several steps down in the list (e.g., step number 3 will have drop-down text), then start a list and enter the first few lines of data in that list.
2. Click the list icon to exit the list and return you to a regular paragraph tag.
3. On that blank line, go to Insert > Drop-Down Text.
4. Click OK to accept the default setup.
5. Select the text that's in the drop-down body. By default it says "(This is the drop-down text)".
6. Enter the text to be revealed. If it's to be a sub-list, then click the list icon or the drop-down arrow next to it and select the specific type of list you want to insert. If it's a paragraph (block) of text, then just enter the text.
7. Click in the first row of the drop-down effect, and select the text that says "(This is the drop-down hotspot)".
8. Click the list icon or the drop-down arrow next to it and select the type of list you want. Enter the information for the line item that will reveal the following drop-down.
9. With the cursor in that line item, click the List Actions icon (to the right of the indent icon), and set the starting number for that line item to whatever number it should be (it won't pick up the sequence from the preceding list so you have to tell it what number to use).

[tbean]

Lisa --- THANK YOU!

I was able to create functioning drop-downs and togglers, both using snippetBlocks, within a numbered list.

The drop-down effect is certainly finicky. I don't like having to manually set the numbering, even moreso as it looks like you have to set it for items following the drop-down as well... double blech...

[LTinker68]

Yeah, that's annoying. To be honest, I don't use the drop-down text effect. The toggler effect is a lot more flexible and it's easier to use in lists and such.

The only drawback to a toggler is that it's just that -- it's a toggle. As Kevin mentioned, I'll have multiple togglers on one page, especially when there's a long list of steps. Each step may have its own toggler, plus I'll have a "Show all screenshots" (togglers) option at the top of the page. The problem is that if a user expands a toggle on step 5, for example, then goes back to the top of the page and clicks the show all toggle, then the content for step 5 toggles off (is hidden) but the content for all other togglers is visible. I've put in a feature request to make the toggler controls more flexible, so that you can set it up so that if the "show all" toggler is clicked, then it shows all the togglers, even if one is already shown. Likewise, if a toggle is hidden and you click the "show all" toggle again, then it hides all the toggles, even the one that was already hidden (i.e., no visible effect to that toggle).

I've also put in a feature request to allow for on/off text in the toggles. For instance, when you click "Show all screenshots", I'd love to have it automatically switch to "Hide all screenshots".

[NorthEast]

For some reason, Flare doesn't like you trying to apply a drop-down effect to a list. You can still do it, but you have to do it in a specific sequence. ...

It's an awful lot easier to use drop-downs in lists than the way you mentioned.

1. On the line you want to use the drop-down, right-click on the li tag and select Make Paragraph Item(s).
2. Select Insert > Drop-Down Text.

That's it, and the drop-down will be a normal item in your list (not in its own list).

[LTinker68]

Your step 1 is the same as my step 2 -- we just used different methods to switch from a list to a normal paragraph. The line items I wrote after that are just details on how to make the drop-down effect, especially if the text to be revealed is also a list.

[NorthEast]

Hmm... no, what I said is quite different.
Your method involves breaking out of the list, creating the drop-down, then applying a list to the drop-down.
A big downside to that method is that the drop-down is not part of the original list, so you have to manually restart the list numbering (in your step 9).

What I'm saying is that you can insert a drop-down in a list much more easily than that, and also keep it in a single list - not breaking it into two lists and restarting the numbering.

[tbean]

Revisiting this one -- using Dave's approach, I can get the drop-down effect into a numbered list without having the manually fix the numbering.

More questions, though

1. Is there any way to place the drop-down hotspot in a numbered list line? For example, I'd like three words in step 3 to be drop-down hotspot text. So far, I can only get words in an unnumbered line immediately following step 3 to be the hotspot text.

2. I have a topic with two drop-downs, both inserted into a numbered list. When I build the project (WebHelp) and open it in IE7, the first drop-down body is open, the second drop-down body is closed. I've looked at the code in the internal text editor and don't see any differences; display=none for both. Any ideas?

Thanks (again)

[LTinker68]

1. Is there any way to place the drop-down hotspot in a numbered list line? For example, I'd like three words in step 3 to be drop-down hotspot text. So far, I can only get words in an unnumbered line immediately following step 3 to be the hotspot text.

I think I tried that once before, and no matter how I tried it (even manually inserting the code) it didn't work. Which is another reason why I like togglers -- you can have the toggler hotspot be in the middle of a line and only contain a few words in that line instead of the whole line.

2. I have a topic with two drop-downs, both inserted into a numbered list. When I build the project (WebHelp) and open it in IE7, the first drop-down body is open, the second drop-down body is closed. I've looked at the code in the internal text editor and don't see any differences; display=none for both. Any ideas?

The only thing I can think of is that maybe you have one drop-down enclosed inside the other drop-down or you crossed tags so that the opening of the second drop-down occurs before the closing tag of the first one. I'm not sure if the first suggestion would really be a problem, although it's possible. And for the second suggestion I'd expect Flare to give you a warning that the topic violates XML. You might want to open the topic in the Internal Text Editor and see if you crossed the tags.

BTW, I use Dave's solution now, too. When that feature first came out, it either didn't work properly or I expected it to do something else, so I didn't use it. Now that Dave brought it back up and I've tried it again, I use it all the time. (Thanks, Dave.)

[tbean]

Thanks again, Lisa. As ever, though, I have at least one more question!

I was just about to convert my drop-down attempts to togglers when I glanced at the topic for "Togglers:printed output" in the index. I haven't yet created a printed target and I'm hoping someone can tell me if using togglers in this manner is a pitfall before I find out the hard way.

The toggler-revealed text, in this case, will be two-column tables containing field names and definitions. The Flare Help has this: "Togglers - Hotspot converted to text; destination converted to inline text "

I don't want these two-column tables to become inline text, at least not the way I understand inline text, which would be text within the same paragraph as the hotspot text.

Does this mean that I'll need to use conditions and have two occurrences of the table in the topic, one as a toggler-revealed online only text, the other as print-only text? I'm sure someone out there has already done this, and more elegantly than I'd kludge together in the next week.

[LTinker68]

To tell you the truth, I've managed to avoid having to create print output, although my luck is about to run out.

If you're putting the togglers into tables, then the table structure should still hold when you output to print. The way I understand it, you'd see the toggled text the same way (and order) you have it written in the topic. So if you have two toggler hotspots at the top of the topic and toggled text paragraphs 1 and 2 followed by the second toggled text paragraphs 3 and 4, then the print output would have paragraphs 1, 2, 3, and 4, one right above the other. In other words, the way it appears in the XML Editor as you're writing it.

For things like this, what I'll do is create a test project with just one or two topics and I'll test the output of the effect to see what happens. If it doesn't work the first way I have it set up, then I'll rearrange them in the test project and build again and so on until I figure out how it needs to be done. I'll then recreate the effect in the real project. I do it in a test project because it'll build faster with just one or two projects and I don't have to worry about inadvertently screwing up something in my main project.

Also, I have a "online only" conditional tag applied to my hotspots, because they're invariably written as "View the screenshot" or whatever, and that line isn't necessary in the print output. For my print outputs, I'll probably add "Shown below is..." type of text cue and put a "print only" condition on it.

[tbean]

If you're putting the togglers into tables, then the table structure should still hold when you output to print. The way I understand it, you'd see the toggled text the same way (and order) you have it written in the topic.

Ahh... so now I've done some testing. And yes, my toggler-revealed 2-col tables end up in Word as.... 2-col tables, exactly where you might expect they would. I also set up a series of togglers using several display properties and can say that they behave... the way I expected them to ("inline" appears inline, "list item" becomes a list item, and so on. stunning.)

This is probably the first time I've gotten the results I anticipated. I'm not quite sure how to react

I do still need to fiddle around with conditions and all that muck, but that is for another day.

[Andrew Heard]

On a similar theme, but sort of turning it on its head, I've not been able to get a toggler to work inside a snippet.

[KevinDAmery]

In order for togglers to work, the toggler control has to reference a paragraph or group by name. It's possible that when you use a snippet, the referenced name no longer matches (worth double checking at least).

[NorthEast]

On a similar theme, but sort of turning it on its head, I've not been able to get a toggler to work inside a snippet.

Seems to work fine for me in Flare v4.2.

It works if the toggler and the named element are both in the snippet.

Are you trying to insert a toggler in the topic to control an element in the snippet, or vice versa?

[dav_lan]

Hi Lisa,
I have added a snippet block within a dropdown as you suggested but my formatting has been lost. Images and text all roll into one paragraph and the ordered list has disappeared altogether, however if I add the same snippet block but Convert the text before I add the snippet to the dropdown, the formatting is correct ie. images appear centred and ordered lists are where they should be.
I am running Flare 5.0.1

Thanks John

[KevinDAmery]

Hi Lisa,
I have added a snippet block within a dropdown as you suggested but my formatting has been lost. Images and text all roll into one paragraph and the ordered list has disappeared altogether, however if I add the same snippet block but Convert the text before I add the snippet to the dropdown, the formatting is correct ie. images appear centred and ordered lists are where they should be.
I am running Flare 5.0.1

Thanks John

There are two ways to add a snippet: as a block or inline. When it's added as a block, the snippet should retain its formatting, but when it is added inline it does not. It sounds like you may have gotten the inline method unintentionally. This can happen if there is other content in a paragraph before you insert the snippet, especially if you select that content first.

In the text editor, an inline snippet looks like this:

Code: Select all

<p>
<MadCap:snippetText src="Resources/Snippets/Graph_DataPanel.flsnp" />
</p>

And a snippet block looks like this:

Code: Select all

<MadCap:snippetBlock src="Resources/Snippets/Graph_DataPanel.flsnp" />

Note that the snippet block in my case is not enclosed within p tags (I'm not sure if it's mandatory -- that's how it worked when I made a sample here).

[dav_lan]

Thank you.
That worked for me.