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Dialog Boxes

 

 

 

 

Introducing dialog boxes

 

  All dialog boxes displayed by publications and ebooks are actually HTML pages acting as custom HTML dialogs. Among dialog boxes you can find the Search engine panel, the About dialog box, error pages, favorite manager, etc...

 

Because you may want to customize the contents of these dialog boxes, you can edit their HTML code.

 

However, please note that you should never modify the scripts or the forms inside these dialog boxes. In fact, these pages are also managed by internal scripts that control how the publication works.

 

  HTML code for dialog boxes is encoded in UTF-8 format, for Unicode support.

 

  Some dialog boxes contain items added at runtime by the publication (like Favorite Manager, Add Favorites, Search Results...). You can customize these items with the dedicated resource strings: for instance, see the resource strings that lets you customize search results.

 

  Dialog boxes use resource strings called "Strings for dialog boxes" for easier localization. All references to these strings are directly replaced when HTML Executable compiles the ebook. To insert a reference to a string for a dialog box, use this syntax: `[#ID]` where ID is the id of the string (IDs always begin with Y); example: `[#YAbout]` will be replaced by the value of "YAbout" which is "About".

 

Modifying dialog boxes

 

  To edit a dialog box, select it in the list and click Edit (or double-click). The internal HTML editor will appear. Press OK to save your changes. It is your responsibility to check whether the pages work fine once modified.

 

  To import/export a dialog box, select it in the list and press XML Tools. Then select Import/Export and you will be prompted to enter the filename for the XML file. Pages are stored as CDATA items in the XML format so you can edit them with any XML editor (or even Notepad if you wish). When you import a dialog box, the existing one is overwritten without any prompt.

 

  If you have made several modifications to dialog boxes and you would like to use them in other HTML Executable projects, you can export all dialog boxes to a Template file. Template files are files with .HESP extension. You can import and export dialog boxes with the Templates button.

 

Templates are designed for exporting and importing all dialog boxes. If you want to export one dialog box only, use the XML Tools.

 

When you start a new project, HTML Executable loads initial dialog boxes from its internal resources in the zip file named chromium.zip, which is available in the HTML Executable installation directory, usually located at:

C:\Program Files (x86)\HTML Executable 2023\Resources\Chromium\

 

  By default, dialog boxes can be resized by end users. If you want to avoid this, please add the following meta tag to the HEAD section of the system HTML page's code:

 

<meta name="WindowNoResize" content="1">