ADOBE ROBOHELP 2017: Image Thumbnails

by Willam Van Weeldon

While Adobe's chief concern when releasing RoboHelp 2017 was improving the Responsive HTML5 output (with search suggestions and improved accessibility), there were other nice enhancements. This week I’d like to focus on Thumbnails (small images that expand when clicked). Here are step-by-step instructions for adding Thumbnails to your RoboHelp project. Image Styles To begin using Thumbnails, you need to first have at least one image style in the project.  1. Open a style sheet for editing. 2. Right-click Image and choose New. 3. Give style a name and press ENTER. (In my example, I created a style named thumbnail.)

4. Click OK to close the style sheet editor. Apply the Image Style to Images in the Project 1. Open the Styles and Formatting pod (Project > Pods > Styles and Formatting). 2. Using the drop-down menu at the right top of the pod, choose Image Styles.

3. Select the image you want to turn into a thumbnail. 4. Double-click the thumbnail style in the Styles and Formatting pod to assign the style to the image. 5. Save the project.

Note: The image doesn’t turn into a thumbnail at this point. I have just set up the thumbnails. Configuring Thumbnails Once you have assigned the style to your images, you can set up your output to include thumbnails. 1. Open the settings of your Responsive HTML5 output. 2. In the Manage Thumbnails section, type the name of the image styles that need to be thumbnails.

3. Set the width and the height of the thumbnail for your output. 4. Click Save and Generate. In the generated output, every image with the image style assigned via Manage Thumbnails is now interactive...

... and expands when clicked:

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If you'd like to learn how to use Adobe RoboHelp, check out our live, online, and very interactive RoboHelp classes.

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Willam van Weelden is a Certified Online Training Professional (COTP), veteran Help Author, RoboHelp consultant, and technical writer based in the Netherlands. He is an Adobe Community Professional, ranking him among the world's leading experts on RoboHelp. Willam’s specialties are HTML5 and RoboHelp automation. Apart from RoboHelp, Willam also has experience with other technical communications applications such as Adobe Captivate and Adobe FrameMaker.

Comments

[Julie Allen]

Hi Willam

I'm using 2 CSS files - one for screen and one for print styles.
By default, an image with 'thumbnail' style appears thumbnail-sized in the print output.
I would like the full-sized image to be used in the print version instead of the thumbnail version.
Can you tell me how I might do this?
Thanks

[Willam van Weelden]

What is the style definition in your CSS? And did you set a height or width for the images manually? The printed documentation doesn't have thumbnails and shouldn't restyle them out of the blue.

Does it help if you generate the output with a stylesheet that doesn't contain the thumbnail style?

Kind regards,

Willajm