Creating and editing a table of contents file in Flare can be very easy to do for both online and print output. You can drag topics from the Content Explorer to the TOC Editor. You can also manually add TOC books and items, and then link them to other files. The links usually point to topics, but for online outputs they can also point to external files, other Help systems, and movies. You put all of these books and items in a structure that you think would be useful for the individual. In online output, end users browse through a TOC to find information. And in HTML5 Side and Top Navigation output, the TOC items become links in menus.
The TOC files you see in the Project Organizer work differently for online output than they do for print-based output. For online outputs, TOC files are exactly as their name suggests; they are files that create TOCs or menus in the output. But for print-based outputs, that same TOC file functions more like an outline. The element that actually generates a TOC in print-based output is called a “proxy,” which is inserted into a topic. You can manually create that proxy yourself, or you can select an option in the Advanced tab of the Target Editor and let Flare do it all for you. There are pros and cons for both methods.
