webhelp margins?

[bbernat117]

When I generate WebHelp from a project, is there way to change the default margins for the content? In particualr, I'm talking about the top and left margins for the content pane, the pane to the right of the TOC pane. Annotated screenshot attached.

This is not critical, but if there's a way to do it our team would like to have the flexibilty. If it comes down to CSS, I guess we could set margins in the body tag, and have two body tags, one for print medium and one for online medium?

-billb

[LTinker68]

If it comes down to CSS, I guess we could set margins in the body tag, and have two body tags, one for print medium and one for online medium?

Yes, I generally set my margin and padding values on the body tag to 0 and then set margin values on the h1, h2, p, etc., tags. I set the margin and padding to 0 on the body tag because that will override the default margin/padding values on the browsers, which aren't consistent (of course). I think one has a default of 4px and the other 8px or something like that. So setting it on the body tag sets them both to the same position in the browser window.

If you set the body to 0 margin and padding, then you can probably leave it that way for print, because you'll be using page layouts to position your content. So if you want your print output to have a left margin of .75 inches, then you position the body frame in the page layout to .75 inches. If you have a margin or padding value on the body tag in the print output then your content won't be at .75 inches from the left page edge. Instead, it'll be .75 inches plus whatever value you have set for margin and/or padding.

[bbernat117]

Went with padding for now, adding some pixels for non-print and explictly setting to 0 for print (just in case). Was great to school-up on mediums, an awesome feature! New to CSS and Flare, so you'll probably get a lot of random enthusiasm from me on these topics, stuff we only dreamed of doing in the past....

-billb

[LTinker68]

Note of caution before you get too far into it... Stay away from the non-print medium. That has caused people problems in the past. Set all your styles in the default medium. You then specify in the print medium only those styles that are different from how they appear in the default medium. For instance, you could set the body tag of the default medium to have a margin of 0 and padding of 4px, and set the body tag in the print medium to have a padding of 0 (it'll inherit the margin value of 0, so you don't need to respecify that in the print medium, although you will see it in the stylesheet).

So use default and print mediums and avoid the non-print medium.

[bbernat117]

> So use default and print mediums and avoid the non-print medium.
Okay, thanks Lisa. That's something I definitely wouldn't have guessed--much appreciated.

Ty,
-billb

[MHP]

I'd rather not do this via the css styles themselves - way too fiddly.

I tried tweaking the Body padding and margin settings; no result!

Is there some cunning way to do this globally?

[LTinker68]

I'd rather not do this via the css styles themselves - way too fiddly... Is there some cunning way to do this globally?

Doing it through the stylesheet is the global way to do it. Otherwise you'd have to add inline formatting to the body tag in every single topic. If you modify the body tag in the main topic stylesheet, though, then all topics pick it up automatically.

However, if you really really really don't want to use the main stylesheet (why, I can't guess), then you can do inline formatting on the body tag in the masterpage (for online outputs) and on the body frame in the page layout (for print outputs). Of course, if you have multiple masterpages and multiple page layouts, then you need to make the modifications on all of them. And remember to do the same on any masterpages or page layouts you add in the future.