Have TOC fully open by default

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Dave Gehman
Posts: 575
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2017 9:05 pm

Have TOC fully open by default

Unread post by Dave Gehman »

Skin: Copy of Flat_Slate_Blue_Webhelp.hmskin

Ok - I've looked through all PPT help file entries relating for TOC that I can find, and I can't find the answer.

Right now, our Webhelp starts with every parent topic showing, with none of the child topics showing under the parents. Opening one parent shows its children. Then opening a second parent closes the first parent children and opens the 2nd parent's.

This makes it very hard for our users to move from concept to concept, topic entry to topic entry. They want to see all the children, because we have insanely complex software.

How do I make it the default to have all the parent topics' children open?
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Tim Green
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Re: Have TOC fully open by default

Unread post by Tim Green »

That's not possible in these skins. For maximum memory efficiency, the TOC HTML is generated on the fly and only exists for the branches that are open and visible. As soon as you close a branch its HTML is discarded again. This is also the reason that other branches are automatically closed as soon as you open a new branch. This makes it possible to manage very large TOCs efficiently on devices with minimum resources, including mobile devices (the keyword index works the same way).

I know this is annoying for some desktop applications and we're going to make this possible in the next major update. It will mean a deep change in the code, however, and since the current code is mature and error-free we're not going to change anything on it at the moment. :?
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Dave Gehman
Posts: 575
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2017 9:05 pm

Re: Have TOC fully open by default

Unread post by Dave Gehman »

Understood. We await the update...
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