A

Anonymous

Question

RH7 TOC books don't open in Firefox

Forum|Forum|18 years ago
November 27, 2007
63 replies
5184 views

I just upgraded from RoboHelp 6 to 7. The first thing I did after the upgrade was to generate my Webhelp project. I wanted to check that the output was acceptable. In Mozilla and IE, the output is fine. When the help opens, the book containing my default topic is open in the TOC and all the other books open and close when I click them.

But in the Firefox, all the TOC books are closed when the help first opens. None of the books will open until I click the book containing my default topic. After I open that book, the others open as they should.

I don't have this problem with the help I generated this morning before I upgraded.

Any ideas as to what's causing this?

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Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Bill

I created a project after the update that seems to work OK except I did not build in a browse sequence. Can I zip and send it to email address I have for you?

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Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Both the opening of books and the synchronising with the TOC seem to be working after applying the patch released 13th Feb.

Click Help | Updates and try it.

For those of you who amended the js files, you may need to reverse that. Don't know but try it if the patch does not work for you. I can now open the books OK and the TOC synchronises.

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BillK1948

Participating Frequently

I have updated RoboHelp so that I am now using RoboHelp 7.01.001. My Firefox is version 2.0.0.12. I can see no change in the problem after generating a new project in RoboHelp HTML and testing with Firefox.

The problem I am talking about is that there is no toc autosync unless the toc books are opened manually first. I have included a more detailed breakdown below. Am I alone in continuing to experience these problems after the update?

There has been some confusion over the symptoms of the toc autosync problem, so I have detailed the problem below:
- My test project consists of three books each containing three topics.
- I have a default topic at the top of the toc outside the books.
- My browse sequence goes from top to bottom of the toc through three books and 10 topics.
- My index contains links to all of the topics.

The symptoms are as follows:
1) When manually clicking on books and topics in the toc everything seems normal
2) When the project is opened in Firefox and the books have not been manually clicked, the browse buttons will step through the topics but the toc books do not automatically open, i.e. there is no sync between the displayed topic and the toc.
3) When the project is opened in Firefox and the books have not been manually clicked, selecting a topic in the index and then switching back to toc view does cause the corresponding book to open to hightlight the selected topic. Again there is no toc sync.
4) When the project is opened in Firefox and one or more books are manually clicked, then testing the toc sync with the browse buttons shows the sync will now work within those books that have been opened. This is true even if the books that have been manually opened have also been closed again. However, any books that have not been clicked will still not sync when tested with the browse buttons.
5) The next time the project is opened in Firefox you are back to square one, i.e. no sync unless the books are opened manually first.
6) Incidently, I do not experience any loading problems in Firefox - pages load quickly and the 'wheel spinning' loading indicator stops after the first, and subsequent, loading with no need to press the Esc key.
7) I have a small, possibly related, problem with Internet Explorer. When using the browse buttons to select the first topic within a book, it is the book that is highlighted instead of the first topic.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

The original problem here was not to do with TOC synchronisation. It was about the fact that until the book with the default topic had been opened, none of the other books could be opened, even by clicking on them.

Kath posted a fix for that but advised she had another problem. That was that the TOC did not synchronise and no fix has been posted for that.

Then Bill came along saying the fix did not work for him. I now need to revisit the exchanges I had with Bill as I think he was expecting the fix to make autosync work and I was thinking along those lines too at that point.

The next thing to take my eye off the ball was when Alan said the fix worked for him. I was thinking about autosync but Alan of course was simply referring to the fact that books can be opened. He has confirmed that he does not get autosync.

So, subject to what I find when I revisit Bill's emails, it looks the fix is only about being able to click the books and have them open. The problem that we need to resolve is 'just' that autosync does not work.

Unless anyone posts to the contrary, I will now raise that with Adobe.

Bill: Please don't think I am saying your emails were not clear. It's just that I was reading them with the wrong preconception.

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H

HKabaker

Inspiring

Mozilla made a number of essential changes for Firefox 2. I wouldn't be surprised if some other iissues came along.
Regards,
H

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Harvey

Thanks for confirming that. The issue now though is that the old fix is still working for Alan and the solution you post is plain unacceptable. Don't misunderstand me, I realise you are just stating the only solution, not that you like it but it doesn't make it any the more palatable.

Alan has kindly agreed to look at a couple of outputs that I have sent him that do not work in the latest version of FF. I suspect that one will work for Alan as he is using 1.5 and I think that is why the old fix still works for him.

Once I hear from Alan, one of us will post back and I will then update Adobe based on what we have found.

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HKabaker

Inspiring

Peter and others,

I've verified that the TOC books don't open by themselves in Firefox 2.0.0.11. RH 7, Win XP.

Conditions:
--Addressing a URL on the company Intranet (not my hard drive, and not File|Open on a Network drive);
--Not a merged project;
--No topics are redirects;
--Generated with auto sync TOC;
--whthost.js modified as recommended [sHTML+="gsTP=null;markBook("+nIdx+")];
--Default topic is at the top of the TOC, not in a book; and
--Books do not link to topics.

Secnario A:
1. WebHelp loads with TOC books closed.
2. Press Esc.
3. Manually open a TOC.
4. Link to a topic in that book.
5. The highlight moves correctly.
6. Link to a topic in a closed book.
7. Topic loads, highlight moves to book, book stays closed.

Scenario B:
1. WebHelp loads with TOC books closed.
2. Press Esc.
3. Navigate to another topic at the top level (not in a book). Highlight moves to the correct line.
4. Click a link to another topic.
5.Topic opens, TOC highlight moves to the closed book. Book stays closed.
6. Don't open the book, but go to a topic at the top level.
7. Click a link to the same topic.
8. Topic loads, but highlight does not move.
9. Cannot open other books.
10. Open the book with the topic.
11. Now I can open the other books.
12. Sync TOC works, and will open closed books only if they have been opened once manually.

In a nutshell, to make Sync TOC work in Firefox 2, you:

--must stop the wheel spinning on first load and on every reload from the browser icon. (If you don't do this, the reload breaks.)
--must open all books manually.

Adobe has improved the code in RH 7 for loading/reloading topics and TOC, but there's lots more work needed in that labyrinth.

Or you can say that WebHelp "works best" in IE.

Harvey

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

It's the last item on the menu.

BTW. What version of Firefox are you using please? Wondering if that is the issue.

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A

Anonymous

Peter,

I don't see any contact information on your web site (www.grainge.org).

-Alan Davidson

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Alan

Would you mind zipping and emailing a copy of whthost.js from the output so that I can compare it with the one I have to see if I can find a difference there.

You can contact me via my site.

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A

Anonymous

Yes, the fixed did work for me. But, I'm not sure how my project is different. I'd be happy to answer specific questions about my project, if you have any.

-Al Davidson

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