Prevent showing project title in page header?

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Mark Wilsdorf
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Prevent showing project title in page header?

Unread post by Mark Wilsdorf »

I'm working with the Minimalist_Blue_Diamond.hmskin ....

How can I prevent the project title from displaying in the header? I only want to display the HEADERLOGO or HEADERLOGO_MOBILE image.
Simon Dismore
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Re: Prevent showing project title in page header?

Unread post by Simon Dismore »

Tim has hurt his hand so can only dictate answers at the moment, but perhaps I can help a little in the meantime. AFAIK you have two choices. Either empty the variable that holds the title, or leave the variable intact but don't display it.

To empty the <%TITLE%> variable:
  • Open the project
  • In the left-hand tree, expand Configuration > Common Properties > Title & Copyright
  • Delete the contents of the Help title text box
  • Save the project
  • Republish the project
To leave the <%TITLE%> variable intact but prevent it from being displayed in the header:
  • Open the skin (I was using Minimalist_Blue.hmskin)
  • In the left-hand tree, expand Project Files > Baggage Files
  • Select HM_HEADERBOX.html
  • Delete or comment out <h1 class="page_header" id="hm_pageheader"><%TITLE%></h1>
  • Save the skin with a new name
  • Publish the project using the newly saved skin
The second approach is less likely to have side-effects.
Mark Wilsdorf
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Re: Prevent showing project title in page header?

Unread post by Mark Wilsdorf »

> The second approach is less likely to have side-effects.

I agree, and that's exactly the solution I was looking for....thank you very much.

(This is my first day working with H+M skins so I don't know where everything is yet...)

Thanks Simon!
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Tim Green
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Re: Prevent showing project title in page header?

Unread post by Tim Green »

Thanks Simon!

I just checked this in the source code and the second solution is fine. There are no scripting references that will fail if that header is not there. Generally, however, I would feel that it would normally be better to have a title there as a reference.

On the dictation thing: I'm actually getting quite good at it. It's definitely a lot better in Windows 10 than in Windows 8 or earlier versions. It's just intensely annoying that there's no way of telling it whether your dictating or issuing commands. It frequently suddenly decides to switch to command mode in the middle of dictation and starts selecting different windows or closing programs. :frustration:
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Mark Wilsdorf
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Re: Prevent showing project title in page header?

Unread post by Mark Wilsdorf »

Tim,

The reason I think I want to do without a title is that I'm embarking on a project I asked you about probably a year ago: I'm going to use H+M to produce our entire Web site (eventually; for now I'll just be switching the site over to H+M a few pages at a time). Attached is what I've come up with so far, as a header.

[img]HMWebPg.png[/img]

Musing about this though, I wonder if the project title should be in the header for SEO or other reasons? What do you think...any ideas?

Each page has the current topic title in its <head> block, of course:

Code: Select all

<html>
	<head>
	<!-- Help+Manual Premium Pack Version 3.10 (c) 2015-2016 by Tim Green all rights reserved -->
	<title>Introduction</title>
  ...
As for the dictation thing, are you using Dragon Naturally Speaking? If so, I understand that problem with switching to command mode. Every once in a while Dragon "does something to me" that I didn't intend. But I've gotten better at learning the proper speech rythym for issuing commands vs. strait dictation--sometimes it's difficult to be patient and plodding (pausing in all the right places) in command mode.
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Tim Green
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Re: Prevent showing project title in page header?

Unread post by Tim Green »

Mark Wilsdorf wrote: The reason I think I want to do without a title is that I'm embarking on a project I asked you about probably a year ago: I'm going to use H+M to produce our entire Web site (eventually; for now I'll just be switching the site over to H+M a few pages at a time).

You might want to look at of the V3 skins' ability to embed your WebHelp in an existing page, in the same way that you would embed a YouTube video. This is covered in detail in the documentation. (Help & Manual Premium Pack 3.1 chapter in the main Help & Manual help.)
Musing about this though, I wonder if the project title should be in the header for SEO or other reasons? What do you think...any ideas?
In this case yes, because you no longer have a "main page". So the title in the header is the only place where you always have the title of your entire project. As you switch pages the header for your page changes dynamically to the header of the individual topic.
As for the dictation thing, are you using Dragon Naturally Speaking?
No, at the moment I'm seeing if I can get by with the native dictation in Windows 10. I've been considering Dragon, but I'm a bit put off by the many horror stories I've seen about interference with other programs, installation nightmares and terrible support... :?
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Mark Wilsdorf
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Re: Prevent showing project title in page header?

Unread post by Mark Wilsdorf »

Hmmm... I'll have to play with that to see if it would do what I want.

I was/am figuring on using H+M to maintain the structure of the entire site. That would work if the WebHelp were embedded in a single container .HTML page...but then all of the pages on the entire site would have the same URL.

And if I used multiple different container pages then I'd be moving back toward manual maintenance of the site's structure.

Or am I missing something?

As for Dragon, yes I've had problems with it "not playing well with others" (software conflicts). I get along with it pretty well because I don't try to have it running all the time--I mostly use it when doing a big writing project. If I were using it as I suppose you need to (have it open continuously, while doing lots of different tasks) my opinion of it would likely be much lower. :roll:
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Tim Green
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Re: Prevent showing project title in page header?

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Mark,

You don't need to have different container pages. You can access different topics in the help embedded in the page with URL extensions. This will also work on pages where the embedded help is normally closed by default.

Syntax

Plain page:

Code: Select all

<path>yourpage.html?hmhelp=overview.html
Page with link to an anchor:

Code: Select all

<path>yourpage.html?hmhelp=overview.html#gettinghelp
Note that when you access an anchor from the URL of your own page like this you use the standard #anchor syntax, instead of the special WebHelp 3 ?anchor=anchorname syntax.

In addition to this, you can also access topics in the embedded help with links from the page in which the help is embedded. This works instantly once the help is open.
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Mark Wilsdorf
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Re: Prevent showing project title in page header?

Unread post by Mark Wilsdorf »

Thanks Tim, I'll play with it a bit.
Mark Wilsdorf
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Re: Prevent showing project title in page header?

Unread post by Mark Wilsdorf »

Tim,

Decided for now to just develop pages using direct WebHelp output from H+M, not embedded (I can always embed later).

Playing with the .CSS I was able to produce a layout I liked (max page width of 900px) which still appears to work properly/responsively.

The only thing I found I could not change and still have it work as I wanted was the header box menu--I could set it to a desired initial position, but I see that the Javascript apparently must manage its position as a flush-right block, so it wouldn't stop moving right once the main page reached 900px wide, as the browser window was expanded wider. Here's an illustration:

[img]timscreenshot.png[/img]

I'm showing you this mainly to say how simple it was to get to this point (probably not more than 6 lines added to any of the hmwebhelp_main_*.CSS templates).

EDIT: I was going to ask you for ideas on a workaround, but I found one on my own: positioning the menu above the middle of the navbar seems to work fine.
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Tim Green
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Re: Prevent showing project title in page header?

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Mark,

The problem you're running into here is that these skins are not at all designed to have a surround as part of the skin in the way that you are doing it here. I don't recommend doing this, really not. Among other things, you run a serious risk of problems on phones and tablets down the line. If you want to get this effect, it is much better to design your surrounding page as you want to have it and then embed the help in that page. If the pages also going to be opened on phones and tablets, the embedded help should be closed by default. Then when the link or button to open it is used on a phone or tablet the embedded help will open in a new tab or browser window instead of expanding within the page, which wouldn't work on small devices.
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Mark Wilsdorf
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Re: Prevent showing project title in page header?

Unread post by Mark Wilsdorf »

OK, thanks. I realize how hard you've worked on making all this stuff work together, and responsively, so I defer to your expertise...I'll reset my target back to a more basic use of the skins.
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