A text hot spot uses a word or phrase as the hot region. The characters in the text hot spot must be contiguous. Help can word-wrap text within a hot spot, so the hot region might extend to two lines or more. By default, Help displays text hot spots as dark green text with a single underline. To override the default formatting, you can use the method described in the “Changing the Standard Appearance of Hot Spots section”, later in this chapter. Help then uses whatever Word formatting you apply to the text.
If you change the default formatting, keep in mind the following considerations:
nUse some visual or semantic cues to identify the hot spots.If you make the hot spot look exactly like surrounding text, users will have to move the mouse pointer around to find hot spots. This can frustrate users or prevent them from finding important information you’ve included in your Help file.
nThe single underline used with the default hot-spot formatting helps users identify hot spots on monochrome displays. Also, the underline lets color-blind users distinguish hot spots from surrounding text.
nUsability tests with Windows Help files have shown that some users confuse italic text with hot spots.