Style and Customize your Outputs
An important concept with structured authoring is the separation of content and layout. This is a core principle, and central for getting the most out of structured authoring. If you have previously been using an HTML-based help authoring tool, a word processing tool, or similar, it may take a little while to get used to the concept. But you will soon see the benefits.
You create your content in topics and then you can control the appearance with:
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Layouts - Depending on the output type, there are different built-in layouts in the Layout Editor. Each layout has settings that affect the entire publication. Some of these settings are for controlling the appearance, for example, setting the headings on PDF outputs.
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Style with CSS - For HTML outputs, you can associate a CSS file with the layout, for example, headings and paragraphs. You can also set the HTML Layouts to include class names.
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Style with JavaScript - For HTML5 output, you can use JavaScript (JS) to provide various features.
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Style with Attributes - For some content elements in your topics, you can Attributes that affect the appearance of your content in the output. A typical example is the
widthattribute which you can use to control the size of images and videos.
The workflow you need to follow for styling your content differs depending on the output type you will create. The biggest difference is between PDF and HTML outputs, as HTML output is primarily styled with CSS stylesheet, whereas PDF outputs are styled in the Layout Editor.
The following sections summarize the process you should follow:
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HTML5 Help Center Styling - If using the HTML5 Help Center as your output.