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Defining What's This (Field-Level) Help in HTML Help

The Microsoft HTML Help output format allows you to create What's This field-level help topics. What's This style topics are small, popup windows that provide information about an individual field on a window. To display this type of help for a field, the user clicks a question mark icon next to the minimize, maximize, and close buttons in the title bar of the window, and then clicks on the field.

Note: Due to restrictions in Microsoft HTML Help, you can include only unformatted text in a What's This style topic. You cannot control the font or formatting, and you cannot include tables or images.

To enable What's This style help

  1. Open your Stationery design project.

  2. On the View menu, click Style Designer.

  3. On the Project menu, click a target in the Active Target menu option that is the Microsoft HTML Help output format.

  4. In Paragraph Styles, select the paragraph style you want to use for What’s This help content, such as WhatIsThis.

  5. On the Options tab, set What is this marker to Define or Define with no output.

  6. In Marker Styles, select the marker style you want to use to define the topic ID for the What’s This help content, such as WhatIsThisID.

  7. On the Options tab, set Marker type to What is this ID.

Before the writers begin to implement What’s This style help, they need to meet with their application developers to define the topic IDs to use for each field on each window. Once they choose a set of topic IDs, they need to embed them in your source documents using WhatIsThisID markers and do not change them.

Writers include the content paragraphs in their source documents and apply the paragraph style you defined. The writers include a WhatIsThisID marker in each WhatIsThis paragraph that contains the topic ID for that paragraph. ePublisher generates the WhatIsThis.h mapping file with the help. You can provide the generated mapping file to your application developers, who can embed the topic IDs in the application code and build the application with the generated file. ePublisher generates an updated file each time you generate the help. Remember to give the updated file to your application developers each time.