I’ve never had a reason to use topic toolbars until recently…so when I needed them to do something that they couldn’t do, I knew I had to hack a solution.

Currently when you add a topic toolbar to a topic, you can select a certain style class AND which buttons you want to add through this window:

Click on the Select Buttons button and you get this:

I selected Previous Topic and Next Topic, with the default icons. Here’s the result:

It’s left aligned on the screen and just meh. Nothing to write home about…nothing special. But I didn’t like the icons close together like that. I wanted the Previous Topic left-aligned and the Next Topic right-aligned on the screen. AND, I wanted custom buttons. No Green Buttons!

Custom buttons? No problem….but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get the spacing to work. So, it was hack time. I talked with Ryan at MadCap and together we worked out a solution:

<div style=”padding-top:15px” >
<p>
<img src=”Resources/Images/back_transparent.png” onClick=”PreviousTopic()” />
<img src=”Resources/Images/next_transparent.png” onClick=”NextTopic()” />
</p>
</div>

First, I created a div tag in to which I was going to place the code.

Then I added the code for the two onClicks, in this case the Previous Topic icon and the Next Topic icon. Essentially, this is the code inside the Topic Toolbar Proxy …just broken out so I can do stuff to it.

Here are the results of the code:

I this much better than the jammed together default view. Try it and let me know how it works for you.

I’ll admit it here – I’m a creature of habit. To wit: I’ve never really significantly changed the look of the Flare UI (or Layout as MadCap has labeled it).

I’ve done some tweaking here and there: specifically, I’ve added the Styles window to always open on the right side of the screen. I got tired of doing this:

…every single time I need to change a style class (although I know there are other ways to edit the style). So, to speed things up, I docked the Style window on the right:

Wow, did that makes things easier, faster, better! At the time I did that, I said, “Why didn’t I do that years ago!”

I got the lets-see-what-else-I-can-change bug and decided to add the Find and Replace window and Index window to the mix on the right but that didn’t work for me:

But I didn’t know why it didn’t work for me. It took me a while to figure it out. What I did do was to set the Find and Replace and Index windows to auto-hide. That way, they’re easy to get to but don’t take up space and I liked it more than the multiple accordion look above.

But then, a bit ago, I was on a conference call with a MadCap buddy and I got a glimpse of his Flare workspace and I fell head over heels for his arrangement. And I had figured out what I didn’t like about the multiple accordions: the accordions themselves!

So I played around with my UI and came up with the following, with which I am very pleased:

What I like about this is that a) no accordions and b) both Content Explorer and Project Organizer are open simultaneously.

While it’s not an original idea (thank you, Kip!), I really like this layout. How did I make it look like this?

See the down arrow in either pane?  Click it and select Floating:

Once the pane starts floating, you’ll see blue arrows like the one in the screen image below. Move the floating pane until the downward-pointing arrow of the four on the left turn orange. When that happens, release the click and you will have a nice set of panes one on top of the other.

Have you made big changes to the layout of Flare? If so, I’d love to see them!