3.2.10 Creating Browse Sequences

You can enable users to browse through a sequence of help topics by creating a browse sequence and adding browse buttons to your help file. A browse sequence typically consists of two or more related topics that are intended to be read sequentially. You create a browse sequence by using the \footnote statement and the plus-sign (+) footnote character to assign a sequence identifier. The following example assigns a sequence identifier to the topic titled A Topic:

#{\footnote topic5}
${\footnote A Topic}
+{\footnote shorttopics}
This is one topic in a browse sequence.
\par
\page

Windows Help adds topics with sequence identifiers to the browse sequence and determines the order of topics in the sequence by sorting the identifiers alphabetically. If two topics have the same identifier, Windows Help assumes that the topic that was compiled first is to be displayed first.

Windows Help uses the sequence only if the browse buttons have been enabled. You can enable the buttons by placing the following in the Help project file:

[CONFIG]
BrowseButtons()

For more information about the project file, see Section 3.4, “Creating Help Project Files.”

You can create more than one browse sequence in a help file by using sequence numbers with sequence identifiers. The sequence number consists of a colon (:) followed by an integer. Windows Help combines all topics having the same sequence identifier (but different sequence numbers) into a single browse sequence and determines the order of the topics by sorting them alphabetically. To ensure that numerals are sorted correctly, they should have the same number of digits. For example, the numerals 1 through 10 should be 01 through 10.

#{\footnote topic10}
${\footnote Alpha Topic #3}
+{\footnote alpha:3}
This topic is part of the alpha browse sequence.
\par
\page