CSH : how to specify topics to be displayed in popup window?

[MC Hammer]

Developers I work with would like some of my topics (to do with the description of validation errors) to appear as a popup when the user clicks on a validation error message generated by our app. Is there any way I can control my topic to appear in a popup instead of in the main Help window?
I have a topic in my HTML Help CHM file which lists all the validation errors and which has hyperlinks to these validation error topics for which I have specified a target frame of popup window. This means that when a user has that help page displayed and clicks on a hyperlink, they will have the related validation error appearing in a popup window. However, we would like every validation error topic to be displayed as a popup when invoked (CSH). Is there a way I can do this my end (in Flare project) or is it up to the developers?

Many thanks,

[Pete Lees]

Hi, Marie-Claire,

If you've defined a help window in your project called "popup", your developers can reference it in their context calls, like this:

HtmlHelp(hwndCaller, "c:\app\help\Help.chm>popup", HH_HELP_CONTEXT, 1001);

But this is a standard HTML Help window (albeit one in which you may have removed the navigation pane and toolbar) and not a pop-up window in the commonly understood sense of a borderless, autosizing window. To display pop-up windows like the one shown in the picture below, I think your developers would need to use the sorts of techniques that are described here:

http://helpware.net/htmlhelp/how_to_whatsthis.htm
http://helpware.net/mshelp2/demo2/h1xNET.htm

popup_example.png

Pete

[MC Hammer]

Hi Pete
Thank you for your reply. I will forward your links to the developers.
When you mention the solution with a new Help Window in Flare, what do I need to do to specify a new Help window (I know how to do this in RoboHelp but not in Flare ). Are we talking skins?

[Pete Lees]

Hi,

Yes, I believe so (I'm not a Flare user ). See this thread:

http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... f=8&t=6071

Pete

[MC Hammer]

Hi Pete
You are not a Flare user???
Thanks, I was not sure we were talking skins. Now I can see a way to implement this, although I think I may need to create a new target to associate my new skin (popup) to (I am not sure but I think that skins apply to targets, not to topics)...

[Richard Ferrell]

When do a CSH call, you can have it call a different Skin then your main help file, this can be specififed in the Alias editor

[MC Hammer]

Hi Richard,
I have found what you mentioned in your post in the Flare Help ( ). So this means that I do not need to build a target associated with my "popup" skin, I just need to associate the topics I want to see displayed in a popup with the "popup" skin in the alias editor.
Ideally I would like the popup window to appear wherever the validation warning is displayed on the screen and not necessarily at a set location on the screen (that I can configure in the skin's Size tab). Is it possible to do this?