Creating Macro Hot Spots

In addition to jump hot spots and pop-up hot spots, you can also create macro hot spots, a word or a phrase or a graphic (see Chapter 10, “Adding Graphics”) that the user chooses to execute a Help macro. Text formatted as macro hot spots appear as green, underlined text in the Help window—exactly the same as jump hot spots.

You can use macro hot spots to customize Windows Help or individual Help topics in many ways. For example, you could have macro hot spots that:

nStart another application

nCreate a new button or menu item

nChange what happens when a user chooses an existing button or menu item

nDisplay a topic in a secondary window

nChange the size and location of a Help window

nPrint the current topic

nDisplay a custom Help file in a second Help window

nAnd perform many other actions

Macros provide a convenient way to create many interesting effects and refine the presentation of your Help file. How you use them is really up to you.

Note:

The procedures for creating macro hot spots are exactly the same as those for creating jump hot spots with one exception: the hidden text following the hot-spot text contains the macro string(s) to be executed instead of a topic context string. Therefore, if you are familiar with the material in the “Creating Links Between Topics” section, you may want to skim the information in this section.