Inserting Concept Links

After you create concepts keywords, you can insert concept (or See Also) links.

A Help control is a special type of link designed for online outputs, often grouping links to associated topics.

A concept link is a Help control that lets users open topics that you've determined are related to the current topic. It is similar to the related topics link. However, whereas you associate a related topics link with specific individual topics (usually for a one-time use), you associate a concept link with a group of topics (to be reused in different topics). One great benefit of this type of link is that, if you later want to add or delete topics from the group, you only need to do so in one place and the changes are applied to every topic containing that concept link.

Example

Example You are developing a Help system for an employee time-reporting software application. You might have a group of related topics (e.g., Creating a Time Sheet, Changing a Time Sheet, Deleting a Time Sheet), and you want each of those topics to have the same Help control button that links to the same topics. So you might create a concept called "TimeSheets." You would then insert the keyword into each of those topics. After that, you insert a concept link into each of those topics, selecting the "Timesheets" keyword for that link.

  1. Insert concepts into the appropriate topics.
  2. Open the content file.
  3. In the XML Editor, click in the topic where you want to insert the link (usually at the bottom of the topic).
  4. Select Insert > Concept Link (A-link). The Insert Concept Link Control dialog opens. The concepts that you have inserted into topics are listed on the left side of the dialog.
  5. Do one of the following:
    • In the All Concepts section, double-click a concept that you want to add to the concept link.
    • In the All Concepts section, click on a concept that you want to add to the concept link. Then click .
  6. The concept is added to the "Selected Concepts" section on the right side of the dialog. Do this for each concept that you want to add to the link. However, a concept link usually has only one keyword associated with it (or just a few at the most). Remember, every topic containing any of those concepts will show up in the concept link in the output. A good practice is to limit the number of topics per concept link. Otherwise, the link tends to lose its significance.

  7. (Optional) If you want to specify other options for the control, click and in the Concept Link Options dialog select any of the following. Click OK to close the dialog when you are finished.

    • Style Class You can select the style class to be used for the control. See Styles and Stylesheets.
    • Label You can change the text shown on the control.

    • Display topics in You can specify that the links should be displayed in a popup menu (same as default) or as a simple list.

      Note For projects that are merged, the list option is supported for standard merging (e.g., linking to an FLPRJ file in the table of contents). However, it is not supported for automerging in WebHelp Plus output.

    • Target Frame You can choose the type of frame used when a link is clicked.
      • Page Default The destination file opens in the same window as the output window.
      • Parent Frame The destination file opens in the parent frame of the current topic while hiding that topic.
      • New Window The destination file opens in a new browser window.
      • Same Frame The destination file opens in the same window frame as the current topic.
      • Top Frame The destination file opens in the same output window, removing all other framesets. You might use this option, for example, if the destination topic has its own frameset.
      • Popup Window The destination file opens in a popup box on top of the current topic.

  8. Click OK. The concept link is added to the topic.

  9. Click Save the active file. to save your work.

What’s Noteworthy?

Note Another type of automated link that can be added to topics is a relationship link, which has a similar result but works a bit differently than Help controls. One benefit of a relationship link is that you can create all of your link information in one place, in a single relationship table. Another benefit is that you can have multiple types of links at the bottom of topics (e.g., one for "Related Information," one for "Related Tasks," and one for "Reference Materials"). See Relationship Tables.

Note When people click a link like this in the output, the text shown for each of the topics depends on whether the topic in question has a title or heading. The title set in the Properties dialog has the highest level of precedence. If there is no topic title specified in the Properties dialog, Flare uses text associated with h1 through h6 heading styles. If there is no topic title or headings in a topic, Flare uses the topic file name.

What's Next?

If you want to change the way the link looks, you can modify the style of the concept link. See Editing Concept Links.

Tip You also may want to apply an "online only" condition tag to the paragraph tag holding the link. The main reason for this has to do with creating print-based output. When you generate print-based output, Flare automatically removes any Help control links in your topics, since they do not make sense in print output. However, this may leave an empty <p> tag at the end of that topic. This means that there will be an extra empty paragraph, where you might not expect there to be one. For example, in print-based output, you might notice that a particular topic ends near the bottom of the page. Let's say that on the next page, a new heading should start. Furthermore, let's say that the heading style specifies a page break before it. If you have an empty paragraph after the text on the first page, you might end up with a blank second page before the new heading starts on the third page. Applying a condition tag to the paragraph holding the Help control link will ensure that an empty paragraph does not occur in that location. See Applying Conditions to Content.