Invariably, certain topics relate to other topics. For the information in your Help file to be clear and understandable, you might need to display certain groups of topics in a specific sequence. Windows Help lets you group specific topics and structure them in units called browse sequences. A browse sequence is simply a series of topics that appear in a sequence when the user chooses the << and >> buttons—like turning pages in a book. These buttons are optional in Windows Help version 3.1. To use browse buttons in a Help file, you must include the BrowseButtons macro in your Help project file. For more information, see the [CONFIG] section in Chapter 16, “The Help Project File,” and the “BrowseButtons” section in Chapter 15, “Help Macro Reference.”
When you design your Help file, you must first decide if you want to use browse sequences. If you do, you must decide which topics to group together into browse sequences. You might decide to place the topics within a browse sequence in separate files, with the first topic in the sequence at the beginning of the file and the last topic in the sequence at the end of the file. In the sample Help file, each category of information is grouped in a separate browse sequence.
Once these sequences become part of a Help file, the << and >> buttons on the Windows Help button bar let users move back and forth between topics within the browse sequence. The browse buttons become active whenever Windows Help displays topics coded with a browse sequence. At the beginning of the sequence, only the >> button is active. At the end of the sequence, only the << button is active. In the middle of the sequence, both buttons are active.