Include a link to a page with the navigation pane when navigating directly to a Brower Help content page url

When building a browser help output, it is possible to view a page without the surrounding navigation pane by navigating to the page URL directly. Although that may be desirable (e.g. for help pages embedded in an application), you may want to provide a link to allow users to view the page with the full navigation pane.

You must be using Document! X or HelpStudio 2015.2 or higher to use this feature.
This is not required for the Light template, as the output is frameless and allows for navigation to the page URL directly

To automatically include a link to the full browser help navigation pane if users navigate to a specific content page:

  1. Open the Build Profile Editor;
  2. Select the Browser Help page;
  3. Tick the Include a 'View with Navigation Tools' link if a content page is opened without Browser Help Navigation Tools option.

Next time you build your help, this functionality will be automatically included in the generated output.

If you want automatic redirection to the navigation page, you can add the following Javascript to .js file (for example named forcewebframe.js) to your project as an "Other File" - this will detect if a topic has been loaded without a frame and will redirect you to the framed version. The Javascript file should contain the following script:

//Load missing frameset
if (parent.frames.length == 0 && window.location.href != "about:blank")
{
    window.location.href="webframe.html#"+this.location.href.substring(this.location.href.lastIndexOf("/")+1);
}

You can use Build Flags to ensure this script file is only used in your Browser Help build profiles - not your compiled help profiles (CHM/MSHV/Help 2).

To achieve this, you would need to create a Build Flag by selecting New Build Flag from the Project Ribbon tab. I would recommend naming this Flag "Browser Output Only". From there, you need to apply it to the forcewebframe.js script file by right-clicking it in the Project Explorer and selecting the newly created flag. Next, you need to set up a filtering rule to filter out this file in any CHM and Compiled Help profiles.

Open the Build Profile Editor for the CHM build profile, then navigate to the "Filtering" page. Create a filtering rule for this as follows:

  1. Click Add New Rule, and then select "Build Flag Rule" from the drop-down.
  2. Change the Filter Kind to an Exclusion Rule
  3. Change the rule to apply if "One or more of these flags are defined"
  4. Select your newly created Build Flag from the list of flags.
You can find a useful movie on using build flags here:
http://www.innovasys.com/movie/viewer/57bb26bd-a62c-452c-92ab-b9b449ee27e3

This is particularly useful when using the Classic and Material templates on a published website that is search indexed by Google - this means that links from the Google Search engine will navigate to your output correctly.

 

 

Have more questions? Submit a request

0 Comments

Please sign in to leave a comment.