In the realm of help authoring tools, hyperlinks serve as an indispensable element for creating comprehensive and user-friendly documentation. These interactive connectors allow authors to link various segments of their help files, guides, or online documentation, thereby facilitating a smooth and intuitive user journey. Hyperlinks in this context can direct users to additional details on a topic, connect related subjects, or link to external resources for expanded information. This feature not only enhances the navigational structure of the document but also significantly improves the reader’s experience by providing quick access to relevant content. Whether embedded in text, images, or other multimedia elements, hyperlinks in help authoring tools are key to creating a dynamic, interconnected web of information that is easily accessible and user-centric.
Technical writers are spending a lot of time making sure that the content they are writing is relevant, clear, and concise so they should not have to waste time operating their favorite help authoring software when they need to perform common tasks such as creating hyperlinks. Fortunately, the HelpNDoc help authoring tool provides multiple ways to speed up hyperlink creation, thus helping technical writers spend their time where it matters the most: writing great content.
HelpNDoc's hyperlink analyzer efficiently inspects your entire project, analyzing and listing all hyperlinks embedded within your topics and snippets. What sets the hyperlink analyzer apart is its ability to detect and highlight broken links, allowing for swift rectification and ensuring seamless navigation. Even more, the feature's batch update capabilities allow for efficient modifications to hyperlink targets when necessary. With the Hyperlink Analyzer, HelpNDoc offers a vital resource that ensures your documentation projects are accurate, efficient, and top-tier in quality.
It is easy to take full advantage of this simple yet powerful feature. HelpNDoc gives you tremendous flexibility in defining four types of hyperlinks:
Specific topics links readers to a specific topic of your documentation Navigation links readers to topics relative to the current topic Internet/E-mail displays a web page or creates an e-mail message File displays or downloads a document There are two ways to begin:
1. Highlight displayed text You can enter and then highlight the word or phrase that you’d like to use in the link.
Using the “Hyperlink” button in the “Insert” ribbon tab, you can access the hyperlink dialog.
Click Navigation in the menu along the left-hand side of the window. This displays six relative locations to which readers will be taken when they click on the hyperlink:
Default topic as defined in Project options on your Home ribbon tab First topic in your table of contents Last topic in your table of contents Parent topic relative to the topic currently being viewed Previous topic that had been visited immediately prior to clicking the hyperlink Next topic in your table of contents When Sibling topic only is checked, links will go to the previous or subsequent topics of the same hierarchal level as the ones currently being viewed.
Using the “Hyperlink” button in the “Insert” ribbon tab, you can access the hyperlink dialog.
Click Specific topic in the menu along the left-hand side of the window.
This displays your table of contents. You can expand and collapse topics, and scroll up and down to view your entire table of contents.
Click the topic that you’d like to link to. If you selected a topic that contains anchors, those anchors are displayed in “Anchor to link to.
Using the “Hyperlink” button in the “Insert” ribbon tab, you can access the hyperlink dialog.
Click Internet/E-mail in menu along the left-hand side of your window. This displays two options:
Internet link: Enter or paste the URL for the web page. To display the web page in a separate window, click ‘Open link in a new window.’ E-mail address: Enter the e-mail address to which the message will be sent and the subject heading of the message.
Using the “Hyperlink” button in the “Insert” ribbon tab, you can access the hyperlink dialog.
Click File in menu along the left-hand side of your window.
Select the file to link to by clicking the browse button to the far right of ‘File path’ and navigate to the document. After you select it, the document name and path are displayed.
In order for readers to access the file, you must place it the correct folder when you deploy your documentation:
Step 1 Place your cursor in the text editor where you’d like to insert the anchor.
You can click a word or place your cursor immediately before it. Or, you can highlight text.
The anchor will be placed immediately above this location. Step 2 Click Insert / Remove anchor in the Links section of the Insert ribbon tab.
This displays the “Insert an anchor” window. Step 3 After you assign a name to the anchor, click OK.
