TOC behavior

[pdxwordsmith]

(I have no idea how to search for this in the help/forums - my ideas have turned up nothing.)

Is there a control to prevent the TOC from scrolling right when the user selects a long topic? I'd rather have the TOC always remain flush left unless they choose to scroll...

Thanks.

[carolynmwallace]

Is there a control to prevent the TOC from scrolling right when the user selects a long topic? I'd rather have the TOC always remain flush left unless they choose to scroll...

So long as you have topic titles that are wider than your navigation pane, I don't think you can prevent the scrolling upon selection. It's a standard behavior to allow users to see as much of their selection as possible.

There are a couple things you can do, however, to minimize scrolling.

1. You can increase the navigation pane width in your Skin editor (see the Flare help topics "Specifying Navigation Pane Settings for WebHelp Output" or "Specifying Navigation Pane Settings for HTMLHelp Output," depending on your target format).
2. You can shorten the topic titles. (Yeah, not very helpful, I know.)

[LTinker68]

I don't have Flare open at the moment, but it seems like I was able once to turn off the "nowrap" option on the TOC to make the entries wrap in the pane instead of extend to the right. It seems like I had to modify the TOC Javascript output file to set that property, but that was back in v2 or maybe v3.1 -- there may be an option for changing that through the GUI. If not, then another option is to change the nowrap option in the JS output file -- it'll require having to make that modification after you build the output every time, but it is an option.

[RiverMonster]

Hi,

I was after a more permanent solution for this too (rather than modifying the JS file after build) but I couldn't find anything in the GUI. It's not that I particularly want the entries to wrap either; I just want the scroll bar to stay where it is. For long entries, regardless of how long the entry actually is, when you click the entry it scrolls about 3 characters to the right. So you get to see slightly more of the text but any book icons disappear off the left of the screen. I find this annoying. I would rather be able to see where I am in the hierarchy and scroll when I want to rather than get that fragment of extra text.

So, I guess it is time to submit an enhancement...

Adrian

[pdxwordsmith]

Exactly! I don't need to see the end of the item in the TOC - it's displayed in the content pane

[NorthEast]

Yep, this is something that bugs me a bit too. If you have deep TOC or long topic names, then you can often lose sight of where you are in the TOC, and need to scroll around or increase the pane width to see everything.

One way to handle this could be to have an option to automatically increase the width of the left-hand pane (e.g. to 50% of the width) when you hover the mouse pointer over the TOC (or move focus to it). The pane could revert back to normal size when you move away from the TOC. That way you can still have the TOC sitting on the left, but you can see it more clearly when you're actually using it. The same sort of thing could happen when you're doing searches.

[pdxwordsmith]

I think (but am not completely sure) that WebWorks' HTML provided hover text for the items in the TOC - the hover text showed the complete text of the item, rather than automatically scrolling right to show the end of the item. And, I believe you (as author) could control it (on or off).

I'd just like an option in Flare to turn off TOC scrolling. Oh please?