Coloring hotspots in help with MS Help Workshop

I've forgotten now but I think I did manage to color the links in the text of my help file the last time I used Microsoft Help Workshop. How do I color them? I want that the links appear in the color of my choice rather than the default green.

sathyaish Chakravarthy
Saturday, October 18, 2003

Unless we're using something different, or I'm making a big mistake, MS Help Workshop doesn't even have an editor, so you'd have to color the links with your RTF editor. I don't recall a setting that will let you change the color on a project-wide basis. However, you could add a KLink or ALink macro to text formatted any way you like.

It's a lot easier if you use a third-party tool, like Help&Manual, which is comparitively inexpensive, but still not cheap. There are definitely cheaper packages out there, probably some free ones too.

However -- playing with a standard, like link text color, generally reduces usability.

Troy King
Saturday, October 18, 2003

MS Help Workshop does have an editor but it's a simple text editor that's barely better than Notepad (or maybe they simply invoke Notepad!).

Anyway, to color links you use the appropriate tags in the CSS file associated with your help pages. Example:

a:link      { color: #0000FF }
a:active    { color: #FF33CC }
a:visited  { color: #800080 }

Chris Nahr
Sunday, October 19, 2003

He said MS Help Workshop, not HTML Help Workshop. I took him as knowing which one. If using HTMLHelp, that gives a lot more options, of course.

Troy King
Sunday, October 19, 2003

Duh! Sorry about that. I'm only using HTML Help Workshop so I tend to forget older versions exist... your mentioning an RTF editor should have clued me in, though.

Chris Nahr
Sunday, October 19, 2003

Troy is right. I am using HCW.EXE, MS Help Workshop (RTF/HLP) and not HTML Workshop (CHM).

Sathyaish Chakravarthy
Monday, October 20, 2003

Shouldn't you leave the colours as the system default?

John Topley (www.johntopley.com)
Monday, October 20, 2003

Normally I wouldn't change the colors. However, I was experimenting with the idea of giving the help files a static HTML web page look. With text in regular 10pt Verdana and headings in 14pt bold Verdana, a single line spacing in between paragraphs, two line feeds after bulleted lists, two line spaces after application grabs, and all links in blue, I thought I might be able to produce an experience of a web page without having to use HTML Help Workshop. Besides, I hate the default colors, the yellow background and the green links. And I also do not like the way the help files scroll.

Sathyaish Chakravarthy
Monday, October 20, 2003

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