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matt harris
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Joined: Wed Apr 22, 2015 4:03 pm

Footer

Unread post by matt harris »

Hi

Is it possible to have a different footer for each individual topic?


Thanks
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Tim Green
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Re: Footer

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Matt,

It depends what exactly you want to achieve. If you want a completely different footer with no common features in every topic you would need to turn off the footer in your template and just add a "footer" at the bottom of the text of every topic. If you want a footer with some changing components you can achieve this by inserting the non-changing components in the template and defining a user variable for the changing components. Then you can redefine that variable in the Topic Options tab (below the main editor window) with the Topic Variables option there.

For example, suppose you defined a variable called MYTEXT. Then you might enter a footer like this in your template:

Code: Select all

<p>Unchanging Text Unchanging Text Unchanging Text  <%MYTEXT%> Unchanging Text Unchanging Text </p> 
Then in the topic where you want to change your user variable, you would add the MYTEXT variable to the Topic Variables in that topic with the + button in Topic Options and enter the text you want to use in that topic as the definition. Then it will only be used in that topic.

However, this is really only practical if you want to change the text in some topics. If you want to do this in every single topic it is probably easier to enter the footer directly in every topic at the bottom of the page. 8)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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matt harris
Posts: 27
Joined: Wed Apr 22, 2015 4:03 pm

Re: Footer

Unread post by matt harris »

Hi Tim

Thanks for the info, i have tried both ways but as you say it will be easier to add manually to each topic. However, it seems to to be trial & error to find the bottom of the page. What appears to be the bottom of the pager in the editor, the footer appears higher on the page once published. Any idea how to stick it to the bottom of the page?


Matt
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Tim Green
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Re: Footer

Unread post by Tim Green »

matt harris wrote:What appears to be the bottom of the pager in the editor, the footer appears higher on the page once published. Any idea how to stick it to the bottom of the page?
Then you probably have some empty paragraphs at the bottom of the page. Turn on text marks display in the editor to make them easier to see. The setting is in View > Program Options > Editor. You can also turn them on temporarily with the paragraph marks tool (reverse P) in Write > Paragraph, but it's best to have them on all the time.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
matt harris
Posts: 27
Joined: Wed Apr 22, 2015 4:03 pm

Re: Footer

Unread post by matt harris »

Hi Tim

Sorry but i'm still a little confused

Example http://mchpictures.co.uk/Document2.pdf

I need to put the Issue number and date of revision at the bottom of each topic in Webhelp. This will be different on each topic. As you can see from the 1st image I have put it at what I thought was the bottom of the page. On the 2nd image you can see that it isn't at the bottom of the page once published. I have also tried the other option of adding a footer to the template and using text variables, however the footer appears at the end of the text on in the topic and not at the bottom of the page, Image 3. I would like to use the latter option so if you could advise how to anchor the footer to the bottom of the page , that would be great. I have also realised that this is only a problem when there is not enough text in the topic to fill the page, as once you have to start scrolling the footer can be at the end of the text.

Matt
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Martin Wynne
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Location: West of the Severn, UK

Re: Footer

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Hi Matt,

I think you are confusing the bottom of the page with the bottom of the screen (or the bottom of the browser window if it is not full-screen).

On a web site, the bottom of a page is where the text stops. Users have different sized screens (or they may re-size their browser window), so for different users the page might stop above the bottom of the screen, or below the bottom of the screen (in which case a scrollbar appears for that user, so that he can scroll down to the lower part).

If you are clever with HTML and CSS you can make stuff appear at the bottom of the screen (or browser window), but on a long page it would then be superimposed over the text as you scroll down.

What's the problem with putting a horizontal line at the end of the text, with any footer information below it? If you have a very short text, you could add a few blank lines first, if it looks better.

One thing to bear in mind is that authors are always concerned with styles and appearance. But all users ever want is the information.

regards,

Martin.
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