Publishing > Configuring Your Output

The appearance and functionality of Webhelp output is controlled by the options in two sections in your Project Configuration:

•	Configuration > Publishing Options > Webhelp

•	Configuration > HTML Page Templates

It is unavoidable that your Webhelp output will look slightly different depending on the browser used to view it. HTML Help, Winhelp and Visual Studio Help / Help 2.0 are controlled Microsoft outputs that use Microsoft help viewers to display them, and your output in these formats will always closely resemble your source in the Help & Manual editor.

This is not possible in Webhelp. The HTML code generated is the best possible compromise between the many quirks of all the browsers now in use and compliance with the W3C specifications for XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.01 and CSS1.

Unfortunately, no browser is really compliant with all the standards. In addition to this, individual browsers often interpret the same rules and formatting tags differently.

The most important sections are Layout, Navigation and HTML Export Options. Always at least check the settings in these sections before compiling a new project.

The options in this section control the layout of your Webhelp.

No Frames, No Scripts:
This option is only for users who want to manage all their help topic files themselves. It does not create an integrated help system. The TOC file and all the topic files are separate HTML files.

Two Frames:
This is the default. It creates a standard help system with the same layout and navigation as HTML Help.

Three Frames:
This is for integration in your own website. It adds a top frame in which you can insert the header of your website or any other web page. When you choose a 3-frame layout you can either load an existing page into the top frame or edit the code for the top frame directly in the Layout section. If you load an external page you are responsible for making sure that it is available at runtime. If you want to store it in the same directory as your help you must copy it to the correct directory on your server, along with any graphics files and other files that it uses.

The options in this section control how Help & Manual generates the navigation for your Webhelp. Most of the options should be self-explanatory. For full details see Navigation in the Project Configuration chapter.

If you want a Keyword Index and Full-text Search tabs in your Webhelp you must activate these features here!

These sections configure the Contents, Index and Search tabs of your Webhelp output. In addition to this you can also edit the HTML templates that are used for generating these tabs. Editing HTML templates directly requires experience with editing HTML code. If you are just getting started with Help & Manual it is recommended that you only use the default settings in the Simple Template Layout tab.

Note that the Full-text Search feature for Webhelp is only available in the Professional version of Help & Manual.

For full details on all the settings in these sections see Webhelp in the Project Properties chapter. For full details on using and editing HTML templates see Using HTML Templates and Templates and Secondary Windows. See Publishing for an important note on compiling Webhelp with full-text search.

The options in this section control how popup topics are handled and exported in Webhelp.

For full details on all the settings in this section see Popup Topics in the Webhelp section of the Project Configuration chapter.

For information on creating and using popup topics see Creating popup topics and Using JavaScript popups in the Creating and Editing Topics chapter and Using Context-Sensitive Help in the More Advanced Procedures section.

This section contains some of the most important options for your Webhelp output. They control how your project is converted to HTML code and you should always check them before compiling a new project for the first time. Changes made here can cause radical differences in the behavior and appearance of your HTML Help output.

For full details on all the settings in this section see HTML Export Options in the HTML Help section of the Project Configuration chapter.

This is a shared section! The options in HTML Export Options are used for all HTML-based output formats (HTML Help, Webhelp, eBooks and Visual Studio Help / MS Help 2.0). The settings of these options are the same for all these formats. You cannot enter different settings for the individual output formats.

This section provides access to the HTML templates used in all HTML-based output formats. These templates define the layout of the HTML pages into which the text from your topics is inserted.

Editing HTML templates directly requires experience with editing HTML code. If you are just getting started with Help & Manual it is recommended that you only use the Simple Template Layout tab. This allows you to use the default template while you are getting used to using the program.

For full details on all the settings in this section see Topic Pages in the HTML Help section of the Project Configuration chapter.

For information on using and editing HTML templates see the Templates and Secondary Windows and Using HTML Templates chapters in the Reference section.