Creating Drop-Down Effects in FrameMaker Source Documents

The following steps show you how to create a new drop-down effect in a FrameMaker source document (if you plan to import that document into Flare). After you import the document, the drop-down effect will automatically be created in the XML Editor.

How to Create a Drop-Down Effect in a FrameMaker Source Document

The following steps may vary in different versions of FrameMaker.

  1. Open the FrameMaker document.
  2. In FrameMaker, create the two drop-down paragraph styles that are required for producing this effect. This is a one-time step in the document. Afterwards, you can simply select the newly created styles when specifying drop-down text. To create the two styles, do the following.
    1. In FrameMaker, select Format > Paragraphs > Designer. The Paragraph Designer opens.
    2. From the Commands field, click the down arrow and select New Format. The New Format dialog opens.
    3. In the Tag field, type PullDownButton.
    4. Make sure that the Store in Catalog check box has a check mark.
    5. Make sure that the Apply to Selection check box does NOT have a check mark in it (unless you want the style to immediately be applied to the paragraph where your cursor is placed).
    6. Click Create.
    7. Follow these same steps to create a paragraph style called PullDownBody.
    8. Close the Paragraph Designer.
  3. In the FrameMaker document, place your cursor in the paragraph that you want to serve as the drop-down hotspot in the online output (i.e., when the user clicks that hotspot, the text below that is identified as the drop-down body will be shown or hidden).
  4. From the styles drop-down menu or from the paragraph catalog, select PullDownButton.
  5. Highlight the paragraph(s) that you want to serve as the drop-down body in the online output.
  6. From the styles drop-down menu or from the paragraph catalog, select PullDownBody.
  7. Save the FrameMaker document.

Note Flare supports FrameMaker 7.0 and newer versions.

What’s Next?

After you apply the drop-down styles to the FrameMaker document(s), you can import those documents into a Flare project. See Importing FrameMaker Files.