Michele,
The help in HTML Help Workshop mentions that authors can
create "What's this" help topics, but fails to explain
how to actually create What's this topics using HTML.
Does anyone know how to do this?
I should preface this by saying that the best newsgroup for
Help-related questions is microsoft.public.helpauthoring, or you could
try the HATT group on Yahoo! (
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HATT).
That aside, there's quite a lot to say on this subject. To clarify,
are you referring to the type of popup window that appears when you
click an underlined word or phrase in a help topic? Or are you
referring to the type of help that you can display by clicking the
question-mark button in the title bar of a dialog box and then
clicking a field or button in the dialog? These are two different
types of help with different implementation methods.
In the first case (opening a popup window from a help topic), you can
create feature-rich popups by using any of the methods illustrated in
Simon Jones' Help Tips file, available from here:
http://www.simon-jones.org.uk/help.htm
or you could try the KeyHelp control, available from here:
http://www.keyworks.net/keyhelp.htm
In the second case (calling up help from an application), the method
you use depends on whether you want to display your help content in
the topic pane of the HTML Help viewer or in a small popup window. To
display help in the topic pane you'll need to set up [MAP] and [ALIAS]
sections in your project (.hhp) file, as described here:
http://www.mvps.org/htmlhelpcenter/htmlhelp/hhtutorials.html#mapping
http://helpware.net/htmlhelp/how_to_context.htm
When the user requests What's This? help on a control in a dialog box,
the topic that is mapped to the help context integer is opened in the
full help window.
If you want to display feature-rich help content in a small popup
window then you'll need to use some technology other than standard
HTML Help popups, which are text-only. One option is WinHelp popups,
but KeyHelp popups are probably the ideal solution. See:
http://helpware.net/htmlhelp/how_to_whatsthis.htm