Basic Working Procedures > Creating and Editing Topics

In this topic:

Each topic in your project is associated with a "help window type", which you can select and change in the Topic Options tab. Help window types define the background color of the topic page and the header. They also control the appearance and behavior of the viewer and windows in which topics are displayed in electronic help formats.

By default all new topics inserted in the Table of Contents (TOC) are assigned the Main help window type, which is the standard window for all normal topics. (Topics inserted in the Invisible Topics section are automatically assigned the Popup help window type.)

For more details see Help Windows in the Reference section and Using external windows in the Advanced Procedures section (this also explains how to use external windows in HTML Help and Winhelp).

How to change the background color of the topic and header:

The background colors of your topics and headers are controlled by the definition of the help window type assigned to them. By default this help window type is Main for all topics in the TOC of your project. To change the background colors you just need to change the definition of Main. Here's how:

1.	Go to Project > Project Properties > Help Windows and select the Main help window definition.

2.	Use the buttons to change the colors of the header and topic background.

3.	Click on to store the new setting.

You can also create additional help windows so that you can assign different background colors and other properties to individual topics. See below for more details.

How to change the help window type of a topic:

1.	Select the topic's Topic Options tab.

2.	Select the window type you want to use in the Help Window field. By default only the types Main and Popup exist in new projects. See below for instructions on defining your own window types.

How to create, delete and edit help window types:

1.	Select Project > Project Properties > Help Windows > {WindowName}

2.	Edit the attributes to change the properties.

•	Add Window creates a new secondary help window type.

•	Remove Window deletes the current window type (you cannot delete Main).

How to change the appearance of the help viewer:

The definition of the Main help window type controls the appearance of the help viewer. The definition is accessed in Project > Project Properties > Help Windows. See Help Windows settings in the Reference section for details of the settings.

The settings have different effects depending on the output format:

Winhelp:
The appearance of the entire help viewer and the main topic window in the viewer is controlled by the definition of Main. The relevant settings are in the Color & Position and Winhelp Options tabs in Project > Project Properties > Help Windows.

HTML Help:
The definition of Main controls the appearance of the entire help viewer and the topic window. The relevant settings are in the Color & Position and HTML Help Options tabs in Project > Project Properties > Help Windows. However, the appearance of the topic window is also defined by the HTML template that is linked to the Main window definition and accessed in the Browser-based Help section (Topic Pages).

Browser-based help:
The settings in the Color & Position tab in Project > Project Properties > Help Windows only control the background color of the topic window and its header and whether the topic window has a header. The position and size settings are ignored. Everything else is controlled by the settings in Project > Project Properties > Browser-based Help (Navigation, Table of Contents, Keyword Index, Topic Pages) and the associated HTML templates.

eBooks:
The settings in the Color & Position tab in Project > Project Properties > Help Windows only control the background color of the topic window and its header and whether the topic window has a header. The position and size settings are ignored. The appearance of the topic window is also controlled by the HTML template that is linked to the Main window definition and accessed in Project > Project Properties > Browser-based Help (Topic Pages). The appearance of the viewer is controlled by the eBook template selected for your project.