No. It’s not necessary for you to create or use any style
sheets with your project. But since they are intended to provide you with
an easy way to control the formatting in your topics, it's hard to imagine
why anyone wouldn't want to use them, especially if you have numerous topics
to format.
If you create HTML Help
from an .HPJ file: You can create styles that use the same formatting
as the ones in your Word templates. These styles are saved in style sheets
that are attached to your HTML topics. If you do not want to work with
style sheets, you can opt to translate the Word formatting into paragraph
and character formats (inline styles) in the HTML topics. In either case,
your formatting is preserved, although with style sheets, you can reuse
the styles in all HTML topics. With inline styles, you have to manually
format characters and paragraphs.
If you create HTML Help
from an .HLP file: A collection of pre-formatted style sheets is
available for you to select. You can use one of these style sheets and
apply it to all HTML topics. If you do not want to use style sheets, all
topics are formatted to use the default HTML styles (that contain minimal
formatting).
Four style sheets are available in your project folder after
you create a new project. These style sheets include: DEFAULT.CSS, HTMLHELP.CSS,
MS_HELP.CSS and W95HELP.CSS.
All new topics you create are automatically linked to DEFAULT.CSS,
unless you link them to any of the other style sheets in the folder, or
to new style sheets that you create. DEFAULT.CSS contains default styles
(the way NORMAL.DOT contains default styles in Microsoft Word). If you
modify any of the styles in this style sheet, they will be applied to all
the topics that also use the same style sheet.
If you create a new style sheet in your project and apply
it to a new topic, all topics you create after that will use the new style
sheet unless you link them to different ones in the folder.
From the Topic List, select
the topic. To select multiple topics, press and hold CTRL
and click each one.
Click Properties.
Click the Appearance
tab.
From Style
Sheet, select the style sheet that you want to use.
To create and attach a
new style sheet, click New.
You can acquire detailed information
from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C),
the organization that develops the specifications for style sheets.
Netscape Navigator 4 (or earlier versions)
does not support all styles in style sheets. Following is a list of the
more common features that are not supported:
Cannot import a style sheet
Monospacing does not appear in a consistent
way
Oblique font style appears as italics
The lighter font weight option is not
supported
Small caps font option is not supported
Netscape Navigator 5 (released in mid-1999)
is designed to be fully compliant with CSS1 style sheets. For more information
visit the Netscape website, www.netscape.com.
Frequently asked
questions about style sheets
Here are the answers to some questions you may have about using style
sheets.