Overview

Understanding HTML selection limitations is crucial when creating materials with UserGuiding. When designing Guides and Hotspots, you might encounter the need to interact with or highlight various elements on a web page.

However, highlighting multiple HTML elements at once for selection purposes is not feasible due to how HTML and web browsers handle element selection.

HTML and the browser's rendering engine are optimized for handling single, contiguous selections. This means that when you select text or elements, the browser processes this as one continuous selection rather than multiple, separate highlights. This limitation arises because the Document Object Model (DOM) treats each element as an individual node in a tree structure. Trying to select multiple, non-contiguous elements disrupts this structure, making it challenging for the browser to manage and render such selections coherently.

For UserGuiding material creation, this means you can only create Guides or Hotspots that focus on one element at a time. If you need to provide instructions or highlight multiple elements, you'll need to create separate Guides or Hotspots for each element. This approach ensures that each element is clearly and effectively highlighted, allowing users to follow the instructions without confusion.

Using UserGuiding’s tools to sequentially guide users through different elements or steps is a practical way to manage interactions on your site, aligning with the limitations of HTML selection.