Creating Tables of Contents

Users can only see the information you have created if you provide them with jumps to that information. If you don’t provide a link to a particular topic, users will not be able to choose that information. (Of course, you can have topics that are accessed only by keyword search, but for the moment we are assuming that users are making their choices based on what is visible in the main Help window.) For that reason, it is a good idea to create a Help Contents topic as a minimal device for providing access to every topic in your Help system. That way users will have at least one jump to all primary topics.

Jumps provide a good way to create structure and organization within a Help file. For example, you can use jumps to create a hierarchical browsing order for a collection of topics. Consider the following graph, which represents the organizational structure of a Help file as defined by the topic jumps.

Figure 8.1. Using Links to Create an Information Hierarchy

Here, the topic links create a clear information hierarchy. The four table of contents topics (C0 through C3) contain lists of hot spots that connect to information topics (Inf1 through Inf11). The contents topics let the user move from general to detailed lists of information, quickly arriving at the appropriate topic. For example, the Figure 8.2 shows two contents topics.

With a three-level hierarchy as shown here, users could access any topic using only two mouse clicks. Add a third level of contents topics, and you provide access to all topics using only three mouse clicks.