In the next examples we add a home page to the 'Animal information' project. It is the project's main entry point and we want ot use menus to provide access to all the topics, the photos and the movies in the project.

First, create the 'Home page' topic. Make it a simple topic with just a title and a few images. This example may not look so nice but it is meant to explain the working principles of menus in HelpServer. Once you get the hang of it you can build a more decorative solution.

The home page

Next, add a new folder 'Menu bar' to the project. This folder will act as the menu bar on the home page. It is meant to hold the parts of the content that should be directly accessible from the home page.

The menu bar folder

Here in this example the menu bar folder holds the two existing books (as shared objects of course) and some sub folders to contain photos and videos.

Now, copy this folder and paste it as a hyperlink in the home page topic

Opening the hyperlink properties

Next, popup the menu on the hyperlink object to open the properties.

The hyperlink properties

And select the invocation option 'In a menu bar'. There are quite some options to determine the behavior of the menu bar and the submenus. For now, accept the defaults and click 'OK' to close the window.

A menu bar is never visualized in the Workbench. You will have to preview the 'Home page' topic to see the result.

A topic with a menu bar

The menu bar and the submenus are automatically generated the moment the topic is displayed. The structure of the folder is completely reflected. Each menu item is either associated with a sub folder or a topic in the structure. If the item is a sub folder another pull-down menu appears when you move over it with the mouse. If the menu item is a topic you can invoke the content by pointing to the item with the mouse and clicking the mouse button.

The next steps are