Extension for HTML topic files:

By default all HTML topic files are exported with the extension .htm. You can change this to .html, .asp, .php or a manually-entered extension but these extensions are only supported in Webhelp.

The .htm extension is always used for topic files in HTML Help, and MS Help 2.0.

This setting is irrelevant for eBooks.

CSS stylesheet file name:

This setting allows you to change the name of the stylesheet file exported with the CSS style information. The default file name is default.css.

Font size encoding:

This setting allows you to choose how font sizes are defined in your output. You can choose pt (points), px (pixels), % (percent) or ems (where 1 em = 100%). Which setting you choose controls how fonts are displayed on the user's screen and whether or not the user can change the font size.

Choose Pixels to lock your font size and layout, Percent to allow the user to change the font size.

Points:
When you export the font size in points the user cannot adjust the font size. However, the size of the fonts displayed on the user's computer screen will vary depending on the Windows screen DPI setting and/or font size settings. For example, if you develop your help on a machine with Windows set to 96dpi (the standard) your text layout may be incorrect on computers set to 120dpi (fonts look much too big, text in hanging indents may be wider than the indent etc). This is because the size of the fonts changes but the size of the other layout elements (indents, locked table cells etc.) doesn't.

Pixels:
This is the only setting that ensures that the fonts and your layout will always be displayed exactly as you see them on your development machine. The font size is always uses the same number of pixels, so it is always the same size relative to other elements of your layout like indents, graphics and so on.

Percent or Ems:
If you select percent or Ems the user will be able to adjust the font size in the help, for example by holding down Ctrl and turning the mouse scroll wheel. This may or may not be a good thing, because the size of other layout elements (graphics, indents, locked table cells etc.) will not change, so the user adjustments may "break" your layout.

Font size of Normal style:

If you choose percent or ems for font size encoding (see above) you can also use this setting to define the size of the Normal style in relation to the default font of the user's browser. The value is expressed in percent and the default is 100%. This is normally preferable because most users will have set the default font in their browsers to the size of font they prefer.

Export XHTML 1.1 compliant HTML:

If you select this Help & Manual will generate HTML code that is compliant with the XHTML 1.1 specification.

This is only used in Webhelp. The HTML Help compiler cannot handle XHTML-compliant code and it is also not relevant for eBooks.

Note that XHTML code is fine for modern browsers but the specification contains a number of features that older browsers cannot handle correctly. If you believe you have a significant number of users still using old browsers it is better to deselect this. New browsers will not have a problem with this because they can also handle code that is not fully XHTML-compliant .

Export style names:

When this is selected Help & Manual uses the full names of your styles in the stylesheet. This makes the sheet much easier to read if you ever want to view or edit it manually.

If you deselect this option the style names are converted to brief, alphanumeric codes that are not so "human-friendly". This can make your project a little bit smaller but not much.

Export lists as tables:

This setting is recommended. When it is selected numbered and bulleted lists are converted to tables in HTML-based output. This is the only way to make stable lists that display correctly in all browsers, using the indents that you set. Even in HTML Help, which uses MS Internet Explorer for HTML rendering, you will find that lists display better as tables.

If you deselect this option lists will be exported as standard <OL> and <UL> lists with <LI> list elements. Unless you use very simple lists the rendering of these elements will be unsatisfactory in many browsers.

If an image has no caption export file name as hint:

Images in HTML pages can have an ALT attribute that displays a small text in a "tooltip" when the user positions the mouse pointer over the image.

Selecting this option exports the image file name as the ALT attribute if the image doesn't have a caption. Unless your graphics files have very descriptive names it is normally advisable to switch this off.

Conversion options for bitmaps and Impict images:

This option controls how the images in your project are converted and exported when you compile to HTML-based formats.

Which option provides the best results depends on the type of images in your project. GIF provides the smallest files with the best quality for screenshots with 256 colors or less.

Screenshots of any resolution almost always look terrible when converted to JPG so you should always choose your settings to make sure that this doesn't happen. Always use GIF and no more than 256 colors for screenshots.

JPG and true-color PNG are really only needed for photographs and continuous-tone graphics. To minimize help file size make sure that all other files have no more than 256 colors.

Output quality for JPEG images:

You can reduce file size by decreasing the quality but this will also make the images look less good. A value of between 80 and 90 is normally acceptable.

Note that this quality setting is only applied to JPEG images actually generated by the program on the basis of the conversion settings (see above). JPEG images that you insert in your project directly are not affected. They are used as they are, without any changes.