Extending Flash Help Panel Content

The HTML format of Help panel pages offers a wide range of display options, and you can create content as rich or as simple as you want. You can link to the Help panel style sheets and create pages in the same format as the Flash docs, or you can create your own styles for completely customized content.

After you have created your HTML pages, you can use the Flash MX 2004 Help Panel Book Builder to generate the rest of the files you'll need to create a Help panel book.

Download the Flash MX 2004 Help Panel Book Builder

Using the Flash MX 2004 Help Panel Book Builder

The Flash MX 2004 Help Panel Book Builder builds the TOC and Search Index files for a Help panel book, and updates the previous/next links on each page. The order of the book is based on the order of the HTML files in the Dreamweaver Site window, when sorted by name.

To build a Help panel book:

1. Create a site based on the folder containing the HTML content.

   Note: Do not create the site directly in the Flash HelpPanel directory, create a staging area instead.

2. Click the Expand/Collapse button in the Site window so that the column headers are showing for the site.
3. Click the Local Files column header so that the files are displayed in ascending order.
4. Note the order of the files in the Site window. The order of the book will be based on this order, so rename files if necessary.
5. Run the Book Builder command.
6. Type in the name of the book as you would like it to appear in the Help panel TOC.
7. Click the Browse button, browse to the folder containing the HTML content, and click Select.
8. Select the items that you would like created/updated:

   Table of Contents File Creates the help_toc.xml file. This file determines which topics in the book appear in the Help panel TOC.

   Search Index File Creates the help_search_index.xml file. This file contains the searchable text for the book.

   Previous/Next Links Creates/updates the previous and next buttons on each page.

9. Click OK. When the Book Builder command finishes, an alert appears stating "Book updated".
10. To manually install the new content into Flash, locate the local Configuration folder, which contains the local HelpPanel and Custom Actions folders:

    Windows 2000 and XP <boot drive>\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\ Macromedia\Flash MX 2004\<language>\Configuration

    Windows 98 <boot drive>\Windows\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash MX 2004\<language>\Configuration

    Macintosh <Macintosh HD>/Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Macromedia/Flash MX 2004/<language>/Configuration

Creating Help panel HTML

You can create HTML files in the Flash MX 2004 Help panel format using the Help panel Dreamweaver template.

To create HTML pages using the Help panel Dreamweaver template:

1. Extract the FlashHelpPanelTemplate.zip to a staging location. These files mirror the directory structure of the HelpPanel directory.
2. Create a new Dreamweaver site based on the extracted files. The root directory should be HelpPanel.
3. Create a book folder in the new site, in the HelpPanel/Help directory.
4. Create pages in your new book folder using the annotated Dreamweaver template in HelpPanel/Help/Templates.

When creating Help panel HTML pages for a book generated with the Flash MX 2004 Help Panel Book Builder, keep in mind the following points:

• The text and structure of items in the TOC are based on the first <h1> heading on each page.

  The text of this heading is the text that appears in the TOC.

  The style class of this heading determines the level of the topic in the TOC. Define the style class as either level1, level2, or level3. If the heading is not defined in this way, it defaults to level1. For example, to make a page appear as a level2 topic in the TOC, include the following code in the page:

  <h1 class="level2">My Heading</h1> 
  

• A page with subordinate pages will appear as a folder in the TOC, with the first subtopic linking to the page.
• To include previous and next buttons on a page, insert tables at the top and bottom of the page, and define the style class of these tables as "nav". For example:

  <body>
    <table class="nav"></table>
    ...
    <table class="nav"></table>
  </body>
  

  These tables are already included in the Help panel Dreamweaver template.

• To include an alphabetic index in your book, name the main index file help_index.html. If you have other HTML files related to the index, name them with the help_index prefix. For example, help_index_main.html, help_index_nav.html.

Page 6 of 7