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In the last tutorial you learned that screenbook Topics and Suptopics are simply folders, and the screenbooks are folders with a collection of files. The name of the folder is the name of the screenbook.

This makes it simple to work with screenbooks via other programs, such as Windows Explorer.

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However, there is one problem. Windows Explorer orders file and folder names by alphabetical order. There is no way to enforce an arbitrary ordering. But you may want your screenbooks listed in a particular order, not in alphabetical order.

There is no way around this problem short of Screenbook Maker creating a special file or somehow storing information about the file order that we actually want. However, if Screenbook Maker were designed in this way, this would mean that the folders would be dependent on Screenbook Maker. Screenbook Maker was designed to create content that could be used absolutely independently of Screenbook Maker, so a special file would not be ideal.

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There are two ways around the problem, though.

First, you can name your screenbooks with a prefix that will force a particular order. For example:

01  Introduction to Paint

02  How to Draw a Line

03  The Airbrush Tool

 

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You may not want a prefix in the screenbook title. Screenbook Maker has a solution to this. If your prefix consists of a letter + a number + a space, Screenbook Maker will not display it. It will display in Windows Explorer, but not in Screenbook Maker. Furthermore, it will not display in any of the HTML pages, so readers of your screenbooks will not be aware that the screenbook title has a prefix.

For example, if you give a screenbook the name of:

A2 My Screenbook

the screenbook will display in Screenbook Maker as

My Screenbook

but in Windows Explorer as

A2 My Screenbook

One simple way to use this technique is to simply name your screenbooks with the prefixes A2, B2, C2 etc.

Also, see the previous tutorial in this series, which shows a set of screenbooks in Screenbook Maker side-by-side with the folders for those screenbooks in Windows Explorer.