Captivate in RoboHelp

Submitted by Willam van Weelden on

Download file: 

swf_popup.js.txt

There are several ways of adding Captivate movies in RoboHelp projects. In WebHelp my preferred way is to put the movie into a popup. This way the movie doesn't clutter the text. The downside of the default RoboHelp method is that you need to add an extra topic just to hold the Captivate movie. For more information about this default method, see the Adobe help: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/captivate/cp/using/WS5b3ccc516d4fbf351e63e3d119e9582981-7fec.html

But I want to add only the SWF without having to create extra topics. The attached script provides a function to automatically create a popup for Captivate movies. The script generates the required HTML and CSS on the fly.

Setting up

To use this script, you need to follow the steps below:

  1. Add the script as a baggage file to your project.
  2. Add the SWF as a baggage file to your project.
  3. Go to the topic you want to add the link to a Captivate movie.
  4. Switch to HTML view and add a reference1 to the script file in the head section of the topic:
<head>
  <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.wvanweelden.eu/swf_popup.js"></script>
</head>
  1. Switch back to Design view.
  2. Create a hyperlink. In the field Link to, add the following command: javascript:SWF("link to movie", width, height);
  1. Replace link to movie with the relative link with the relative path from the topic to the movie. Leave the quotes!
  2. Replace width with the width of your Captivate movie.
  3. Replace height with the height of your Captivate movie. Note that if you use the Playbak Control you need to add the height of the Playback Control to the height of your movie. The height of the default Playback Control is 31 pixels.

Your link should now look something like this: javascript:SWF("../swf/mymovie.swf", 500, 500);

  1. Click OK to close the hyperlink dialog.
  2. Now save your topic and generate your help.

That's it. You now have a perfect fitting popup for your Captivate movies.

 

  • 1. The relative path from the topic to the script file.

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