Field text substring to mimic hotword in XML

[Andy]

I have a text field to which I have added html span tags. They are used to provide object IDs for substrings of the text so the substrings can be styled dynamically. Now I need certain other substrings of that text to be clickable, like hotwords. In the post, "Events supported in XML documents", I saw how a click event can be defined in XML for a field.
I would like to do this for my substrings but have not had any luck. I tried using ID attributes in both span tags and anchor tags but I can't get either of them to accept a click. I think I might need to provide an href attribute to the anchor but I don't know what the target would need to be. Is there a way to achieve this kind of functionality?
Thanks, Andy

[Clifton]

This is where the real power of XML files start to benefit developers. There is literally nothing your cannot do in ToolBook when paired with XML configuration files.
Consider this ToolBook page with a single field drawn named "myField":

ToolBook page with a single field.

Image 1.png (1.32 KiB) Viewed 6321 times

To create an example that may simulate in principle what you are trying to do:

1. I created this CSS file to establish effects when the <a> link is clicked:
   
2. I created this XML file which contains everything else required for this example:
   
3. I added the CSS and XML files to the DHTML export tree of the TBK file.
   

   

   Add CSS & XML to Export Tree List

   Image 2.png (82.75 KiB) Viewed 6321 times

4. Finally, I added a single action to the on load page event of the ToolBook page. The XMLHttpRequest() loads the XML file and processes the configuration.
   

   

   Add XMLHttpRequest() action on load page.

   Image 3.png (13.68 KiB) Viewed 6321 times

After exporting the TBK, I got this result:

The key to this is the XML tag <showMsg>. This tag tells PowerPac's XML Interpreter to locate the element whose id is "showMsg" and style the font-weight to normal and then add an onclick function to toggle the styling for the contents of the span element whose id is "userid".

Except for the XMLHttpRequest() action in ToolBook, no other actions are used. Everything is included in the XML file. This makes exporting your TBK file very fast and you can just edit your XML files after export to get everything to work as expected. This beats using actions and waiting for ToolBook to re-export the file only to find out more edits are required.

Finally, the CSS stylesheet was used only to create an effect when the <a> link is hovered and clicked.
 

[Andy]

Yes, that's just what I need. Thanks!