Productivity Tip

Note that there is no Keep window on top setting for HTML Help. This can only be activated by the programmer in the call to the HTML Help – see the HTML Help API documentation for details.

Links to secondary help windows open a new help window:

Activates external windows. When you specify a secondary help window in the Insert Hyperlink dialog (with the Window: option) the target window will be opened in an external window with the settings for the specified secondary window.

If this option is not activated links to secondary windows will open in the main help viewer.

Font for TOC and dialog boxes:

This option defines the font used in the TOC and dialog boxes in HTML Help CHM files. Note that HTML Help is designed to work with the default font and font size settings so please test thoroughly if you use different fonts or sizes.

The default is MS Sans Serif,8,0. The value 8 defines the font size and should generally not be changed. The last value defines the character set. A value of 0 tells Help+Manual to set the character set automatically.

Setting for English and Western European languages

It is generally advisable to leave the default setting of MS Sans Serif,8,0 as it is for English and Western European languages. If you do change it you should test your published help thoroughly to make sure that everything fits.

Languages with special character sets

It may be necessary to choose other fonts for languages with special character sets, including Eastern European languages, Greek, Turkish and Asian languages. In these cases you may need to experiment a little until you find a font that produces satisfactory results.

You should always use a standard font included with Windows in these languages, however, otherwise the font may not be available on your users' systems when the help is displayed.

Visible buttons:

These options are used to choose which control buttons are displayed in the help viewer. You may want to switch them all off for external windows.

Window has a navigation panel:

This option activates or deactivates display of the help viewer's navigation panel containing the Table of Contents, keyword index and other tabs. You may want to disable this for external windows. Note that if you also disable the Hide/Show button in the Visible Buttons section the user will not be able to activate the navigation panel at all!

Search tab:
Favorites tab:

These options activate or deactivate the display of the Search and Favorites tabs in the navigation panel. Note that if they are disabled it will not be possible for the user to enable them.

Save size and position in Registry:

When this is selected the current help window size and position are saved in the Windows Registry when the user closes the help. Otherwise the size and position you define will always be used. Don't turn this option off; it really annoys most users if their positions are not saved!

User-defined buttons:

Allows you to define two HTML URLs as targets for the Home button and two user-defined buttons. (These buttons must also be activated in Visible buttons: to be displayed.)

You cannot enter links to topics in the help here. Note that you must enter fully-qualified URLs including the protocol (i.e. http://, ftp:// etc). Simple URLs without the protocol (e.g. www.domainname.com) will  not work.

You can edit the names of the Jump 1 and Jump 2 buttons but you cannot change the name of the Home button.

The icons displayed for these buttons are hard-wired into the Microsoft HTML Help viewer and cannot be changed.