I’m back!

Christmas and New Year have come and gone and I haven't posted an entry for a long while. Initially this was because I was on holiday. More recently I've been spending most of my available time trying to finish off a technical manual I've been spending way too long writing. The end is now in sight, so I may be able to think of other things again soon.

I spent some time yesterday trying to get to grips with some Javascript to make expand/collapse sections work in Mozilla, Opera and IE. I started with code based heavily on the way Microsoft do it in some of their HTML Help pages (e.g. there's a page about Accessibility in the online help for IE that uses expandable sections). The trouble is their way is a purely IE way and doesn't work in Mozilla. It uses IE-only Javascript properties like innerHTML and sourceindex – both of which are really useful, but I couldn't find Mozilla equivalents, so I had to start from scratch and write my own Javascript file. I'll post this up here sometime so that you can see how it works. What I came up with in the end works quite nicely and keeps the HTML very simple by doing all the formatting in a separate CSS file and using the Javascript to switch the class names of various elements onload, onmouseover and onclick. The images used for the expander links (+ and - icons) and the display properties ("block" or "none") of the expandable block are all defined in the CSS file. OK, it doesn't mean much until you see it!

I notice this week that Framemaker 7.1 has now been released. I have been given verbal approval to buy a copy at work, but I haven't yet managed to get a UK price for an upgrade copy. However, I'm not holding out too much hope that 7.1 will solve all the round-tripping problems I had with 7.0. But I'll keep you posted.