Designing online glossaries

An online glossary is a list of terms and definitions that are part of your project. Glossaries give users definitions for new or unfamiliar words.

Use the Glossary Designer to build an online glossary for your Microsoft HTML Help projects. The Glossary Designer is a left-hand component grouped with the Project, TOC, Index, and Tools tabs. You can add, change, rename, and remove terms and their corresponding definitions in this component.

You can also link glossary terms to your topics with the Smart Glossary Wizard. It searches through the content of your topics and finds terms that are defined in the glossary. The Smart Glossary Wizard can then format the term text as an expanding glossary hotspot that, when clicked, displays its corresponding definition.

When you create a glossary for your project, a special glossary file (.GLO) is updated to include the terms and definitions. This file is always present in the project folder regardless of whether it includes an online glossary. The name of the .GLO file is based on the name of your project. (If your project is named Sailing.MPJ, then it would be Sailing.GLO.) If you create a glossary, the .GLO file provides the functionality that makes your glossary work. When you compile your project, the .GLO file becomes part of the .CHM file — it does not need to be distributed as a separate component.

WARNING! Do not delete the .GLO file from your project folder or all glossary information that you have added will be lost.