Changing color of selected and/or visited Search Results

[beagley]

In the search results in Web Help, if you click on a result, the result item's background turns gray and the topic is displayed on the right.

If you then click on a DIFFERENT result, that topic also turns gray, and the first topic stays gray.

End result: you can have three or four topics colored "gray", with no clear association between what is selected on the left with what is shown on the right.

Question: is there any way to use a different background color (or colored font, or some other contrast) so that the "currently displayed" or LAST selected topic stands out in the Search Results from topics that were just visited earlier?

Someone figured out how to adjust mouse-over color by editing MadCapSearch.js, so I think maybe this is possible, but I'd need help figuring out what to do!

[NorthEast]

That definitely isn't what I get in my WebHelp. The items in the results turn grey only when I hover over them. They don't stay grey when I move the mouse off, even if I click on them.

Does this happen in different browsers too?

[beagley]

Dave,
Yes,
I'm getting "click and it stays gray" behavior for all skins for Firefox and Safari on both Windows and Macintosh.

I just thought this was how Web Help worked!

If I click on various results, it ends up looking like this:

Image Attached.


Which is very difficult visually to tell what I'm viewing NOW.

http://www2.pcc.com/staff/douglas/staysgray.png

[LTinker68]

Same thing is happening for me, although that was testing an online project that had been built with v3.x I believe. I haven't done any online output in v4 or v5, so I don't know if it's still the case. What version of Flare are you using?

[beagley]

4.2

Though I somehow think this has more to do with the Web Help java stuff than Flare.

[LTinker68]

I just tested the same output in IE7, both from a web server and from my local computer, and it didn't do that. It does do it in Firefox v3, but not in IE7. One of the few things I can think of that don't work right in Firefox but does in IE. What browser(s) are you seeing that behavior in?

[NorthEast]

If you have access to other PCs, it'd be worth checking it out on them, so you can tell if the problem is specific to your machine.

Also pop in a support request so MadCap know there's an issue.

[beagley]

I've tried a few different computers and see the same result. It was actually one of my beta testers that noticed the behavior... but I believe she also uses Firefox.

We have an office-wide ban on Internet Explorer, and encourage the same ban for our clients and customers. I'll try and find a PC with it installed and give it a try, though.

-d

[beagley]

Aha!

Yep. The gray-selection stuff works fine in Internet Explorer.

It does not work properly in any other browser I've tried.

I'll send this to MadCap.

If anyone knows the css/skin style that controls that gray background of selected-search result items, I would love to turn it off for now. Let me know!

Even if MadCap fixes, I'll bet it's something in the skin, and I've got a good amount of time and effort invested in my custom skin.
-d

[beagley]

I submitted this as a bug/request.

Unfortunately, they just AGREED and sent it to dev.

So I still don't know how to turn the feature off.

There must be a way to hack the skin or the style output, at least, and disable that gray highlighting that occurs when you hover over search results.

If anyone has an idea, please let me know.

[LTinker68]

Go to the output folder, then go into the Content\SkinSupport folder. Open the MadCapSearch.js file and Notepad and do a search on #dddddd. You'll jump to the style for the background color for the results. Change that to #ffffff (or whatever background color you set the accordion pane to be).

You'll need to modify that value every time you do a build, or just make a copy of that modified JS file and after every build, copy the modified file over the generated file. Or you could modify the same file in the Flare program folder to have that change filter down to all projects.

[beagley]

Thanks!

Your post sounds like what I need, Lisa, and I'll tackle this tomorrow.

At almost the same time, I also got a nice note back from MadCap!:

Code: Select all

That little piece of code is located in the MadCapSearch.js file, located in your output 'Content\SkinSupport' folder. Open it in Notepad.
Search for this piece of code:
function ResultTROnmouseover()
{
	this.setAttribute( "MadCap:altBackgroundColor", this.style.backgroundColor );

	this.style.backgroundColor = "#dddddd";
{

You can just remove the #dddddd and leave the quotes there. This will need to be done each time you generate and although I looked at it in Firefox and IE we just wont know of any adverse side effects because this was done outside the scope of development. 

So, results may vary and there are no guarantees on compatibility down the road, etc., but this is very promising!

Thanks a lot to all the community + MadCap!
D

[beagley]

This went well...
but of course, now I'm tempting to fiddle around in that file, some more... there has GOT to be a way to fix this bug right in that file...

I need some smart food.