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Create Table of Contents from Articles

You know that correctly laid out table of contents is very important for overall success of the publication. It is vital to have a comprehensive, yet intuitive navigational tool, and table of contents is this tool.

But merely having table of contents is not enough. It must be thorough,  multi-level, down-to-chapter. Just in this case it is really useful and serves as a perfect outline, helps to grasp the ideas of the document and allows to navigate quickly. Speaking in terms of HTML, it is not enough to have a TOC that links to the files, you also need to have a table of contents that links to each chapter via headings and subheadings.

Advanced HTML TOC creates professional-looking, of variable depths, numbered or not, fully customizable via templates, tables of contents. It can handle not only HTML documents, but is also suitable for software help authoring, as it can create TOC and navigational facilities that are useful for both off-line (shipped with the product) and on-line help systems. Of course, it is perfect for various instructions, technical documentation, corporate policies and rules, that is, in any document which needs to be well structured.

Expanding and collapsing TOC example.	Web site tree example.

Capabilities

• Can process single or multiple files.
• Automatically uses existing named anchors inside headings (<h> tags) or creates new ones if none.
• Automatically links TOC items to headings.
• User sets range of header <h> tags being used in TOC. E.g.: <h1> through <h3>, or <h2> through <h6>. This can be used to generate TOCs of various depths from the same files.
• Can process page titles, which is useful for multiple file processing. Titles have precedence over <h1> tags.
• Completely re-entrant. If you change the file after you have generated TOC, when you again supply it to the program, the program doesn't create redundant named anchors and doesn't duplicate TOC. It means that you don't have to maintain separate source and output files.
• Can put numbering (like "1.20.4.") both into TOC items and <h> tags. If multiple files are processed then numbering is kept in order throughout all files.
• TOC appearance is based on a template. User can create a new template or edit existing one. You have total control over TOC style. Program is shipped with these predefined templates:
  1. Tree.
  2. Tree with bullets.
  3. Expandable / collapsible tree.
  4. Bulleted tree with "differentiated" headers.
  5. Indent based tree.
  6. Pure text. It is indent based too.
• User specifies a place where to insert TOC with <!--TOC--> tag. Without this tag program selects a place automatically.
• Ability to clear the code generated.

Benefits

• Simple as 1-2-3.
• No programming skills required.
• Instant professional-looking result.
• Supports expanding / collapsing table of contents, which works in any browser and downgrades well.
• Fully customizable. Output is generated in accordance with templates. You can change everything in a template.

Live examples

• Left framed Table of Contents menu: expanding and collapsing JavaScript menu created with Advanced HTML TOC. See also the picture above.
• Web site tree.

Links

• Advanced HTML TOC