Reference > Context-Sensitive Help & Popups > About context-sensitive popups

A context-sensitive popup is a popup displayed directly from within your application (right-click on any control in Help & Manual and select What's This? to see an example).

The first thing to understand is that context-sensitive popups are actually the same topics as the normal popup topics displayed within your help. In your Help & Manual project the same popup topics in the Invisible Topics section can be used for both purposes. The main difference is how they are called:

•	Normal popup topics are displayed within the help when the user clicks on a link in a topic – for example to display a definition or an explanation.

•	Context-sensitive popup topics are called directly by the application and displayed in little windows of their own. This is done without displaying the rest of the help at all. Only the little popup is displayed, and it is closed again as soon as the user clicks on it.

In addition to this there are settings in the Project Properties that control how popups are handled in HTML Help and Browser-based Help. (See below for more details.)

Example of a context-sensitive popup:

A context-sensitive popup in an application.

The example on the left shows a popup topic displayed in an application. It is displayed on its own, without the main help file.

Exactly the same popup could also be displayed within the help with a popup link. It would look almost identical – in the help it would just usually be white instead of yellow. (This is dictated by the help viewer and cannot be controlled from within Help & Manual.)

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The example above uses dual-mode help, which makes it possible to use popups with formatted text in HTML Help. This is why it is possible for the popup to have a title with bold text. However, note that Windows Vista does not include support for Winhelp, so if Vista is important for you don't use dual-mode help any more.

•	Help & Manual 4 also supports a new technology called JavaScript popups for formatted popups in HTML Help and Browser-based Help. JavaScript popups cannot be used for context-sensitive help however.

About creating context-sensitive popups:

To create context-sensitive popups basically all you need to do is create popup topics in the Invisible Topics section and provide the necessary topic IDs and/or help context numbers to the programmers so that they can make the calls. See About implementing context help for more information on this.

It is also important to understand that only Winhelp and HTML Help can be used for context-sensitive popups called directly from applications and displayed in the applications. See Popups in Winhelp and HTML Help for more details on how popups are handled in these output formats.

Finally, if you are writing context-sensitive popups for an application you may have to produce a lot of popups. You can save yourself a lot of work by generating your context-sensitive popups automatically.

In Winhelp:

In Winhelp Note that Windows Vista does not support Winhelp. If you want to be compatible with Vista you must transition to a different help format. you don't need to configure anything to generate context-sensitive popups. The popup topics in the Invisible Topics section will be integrated in the main help file and support formatted text, graphics and links. Context-sensitive calls are made directly to the topics in the main help file.

In HTML Help:

In HTML Help you can choose from four different popup modes. Only two of these modes can be used for context-sensitive popups called from applications, so you must choose one of these modes:

•	Go to Project > Project Properties > HTML Help > Popup Topics to set the popup mode for HTML Help.

Modes supporting context-sensitive popups:

Text-only popups:

This is HTML Help's "native" popup mode. The popups are stored in the main help file in an internal plain text-file, which is called CSHelp.txt by default (you can change this). Calls are made to this file using the standard popup calling syntax of the HTML Help API. No graphics, links or formatted text (bold, italics etc.) are supported.

Dual-mode help:

If you select this mode Help & Manual exports all the popup topics in the Invisible Topics section to a separate Winhelp Note that Windows Vista does not support Winhelp. If you want to be compatible with Vista you must transition to a different help format. .HLP file. Topics in Invisible Topics with other help window types (set in their Topic Options tabs) are not included in this file. Calls to the topics are made to this .HLP file using the standard Winhelp popup calling syntax.

Tip:
You can achieve exactly the same result by creating a separate Winhelp project for your popup topics. Just create your popup topics in the Invisible Topics section, leave the TOC section empty and compile as Winhelp. Here too, the calls to the .HLP file from your application are made using the standard Winhelp popup calling syntax.

You can use this approach to use JavaScript popups in your help and Winhelp popups for context calls for your application. See here for details.

Modes not supporting context-sensitive popups:

HTML-encoded popups:

This mode outputs popup topics as normal topics that are displayed in the main window of the HTML Help viewer. They are basically just invisible topics using the template of the popup window type. This mode cannot be used for context-sensitive popups called from applications because the topics are not really popups, they are normal topics.

JavaScript popups:

This new popup mode uses JavaScript coding to generate popups that can contain formatted text, links, graphics and even videos and animations. These popups also support graphical effects and transitions (fade-in etc.), and can be used in both HTML Help and Browser-based Help. However, JavaScript popups also cannot be used as context-sensitive popups called from applications. See Using JavaScript popups for details.