Basic Working Procedures > Configuring Your Project > Background colors and help viewers

If you are planning to publish your project to HTML Help (CHM) or the obsolete Winhelp (HLP) format you will also want to configure the appearance and features of the Microsoft help viewers used to display these formats. These settings are stored in what is known as a "help window definition".

You can also define background colors for your topic pages and topic headers. These colors are defined in the help window definition for Winhelp and in the HTML page templates for all other electronic formats. You cannot define topic and header background colors for PDF, RTF or printed manuals.

The settings in Help window definitions are only relevant for the Microsoft HTML Help and Winhelp formats. For details see Help Windows and Help Windows Settings in the Reference section and Choosing a help window in the Creating Topic Files section.

Background colors can only be set for the topics and headers in electronic help formats. The background colors are ignored in PDF, RTF and printed manuals.

Background colors for HTML Help, Webhelp, eBooks and Visual Studio Help

In all these formats the background colors for the topic and header are set in the HTML Page Template settings.

•	In the Project Explorer, go to Configuration > HTML Page Templates > Default and set the colors for the header and topic.

You can apply different background colors to different topics by creating additional HTML page template definitions and choosing different templates for individual topics in the tab behind the main editor window.

Background colors for Winhelp:

1.	In the Project Explorer go to Configuration > Common Properties > Help Windows and select the Main help window in the drop-down list at the top of the dialog window.

2.	Select the Winhelp Options tab and define the background colors.

You can apply different background colors to different topics by creating additional help window definitions and choosing different help windows for individual topic in the tab behind the main editor window.

You can adjust the features of the Microsoft help viewers for HTML Help and the obsolete Winhelp format by editing the settings of the Main help window in Configuration > Common Properties > Help Windows.

There are separate sections for the HTML Help and Winhelp help viewers and there is also a common section where you can define the text in the help window title bar and the help window size and position.

Help viewer settings for HTML Help:

1.	In the Project Explorer go to Configuration > Common Properties > Help Windows and select the Main help window in the drop-down list at the top of the dialog window.

2.	Set the size and position of the help window in the General Options tab. In HTML Help this setting will only be used the first time the user opens the help. After this Windows will apply the last size and position used by the user.

3.	The title bar text is displayed in the title bar of the help viewer. The standard setting <%TITLE%> displays the title of your help project from your Title and Copyright settings.

4.	Select the HTML Help Options tab and define the help viewer settings.

Help viewer settings for Winhelp:

1.	In the Project Explorer go to Configuration > Common Properties > Help Windows and select the Main help window in the drop-down list at the top of the dialog window.

2.	Set the size and position of the help window in the General Options tab.

3.	The title bar text is displayed in the title bar of the help viewer. The standard setting <%TITLE%> displays the title of your help project from your Title and Copyright settings.

4.	Select the Winhelp Options tab and define the help viewer settings and the background colors.

Note that if you want to control the size and position of the help viewer window in HTML Help you must change two settings:

1.	Set the window size and position in the Color and Position section.

2.	Deselect the option Save user-defined positions after first use in the HTML Help Options section.

If you don't do this your window settings will be ignored and Windows will save and use the last window size and position set manually by the user. Most users prefer this and dislike it when a program sets its own window size and position for the help!