Search results redirect to parent in Firefox

A couple of immediate workarounds present themselves here, pending resolution by Adobe.

1. Don't sync TOC. OK, maybe that's unacceptable.
2. Remove links from books and insert a page (leaf) as the first topic in each book.
Is that unacceptable? Why? What's the more important here -- making the target topic "stick" when you've come from a Search or Index link, or preserving those book links to topics?

Robert, if you can develop an easy solution and share it with us, that's great! Maybe Adobe will pick it up and give you credit, if they can't afford to spend the time on fixing this.

Harvey

Hi Guys,

We have a huge project in robohelp (some 7100 topics). We are a publisher of medical guidelines, and this project is essentially an electronic version of our book series. We've been developing it in RoboHelp ever since late 2001, and we're currently using RH5, but we've also got a copy of RH7 that we're testing in pending switching over to using it.

We've had the exact problem that's been described here for at least the last three years, if not longer; it's present in both our RH5 and RH7 builds. Each time we do a release of our product (three a year) I try to find a solution, and this is the closest I've come despite reporting the bug several times, and even generating a minimal fileset that demonstrates the problem (I've not submitted a bug report since Adobe have taken the reins though so I guess they're off the hook ;).

The way it manifests itself for us is the same as what has been described in this thread so far. It's kind of subtle though, so I'll add my version to see if helps at all.

We call it the "Jumping TOC" problem. Essentially what happens is that the content frame and toc jump from a leaf topic back to its containing book. This occurs whenever the leaf is reached by some other means than clicking on the toc itself. So you could be clicking on a link in a topic which leads to another topic, you could click on a link from the index or search tabs. However you do it, instead of being taken to the topic that you expect, you are taken to its containing book. This happens so fast it's easy to miss it, which makes the DHTML toc unusable for us in FF.

Pretty much all of our books have topics associated with them, and they're different topics than those linked to by their child topics. The jump can occur whether the child topic you're trying to link to is itself a book or just a leaf topic.

Note that it only occurs when using the DHTML toc, not the Java or Plain HTML and it only happens with syncing enabled. Since the release of Firefox 3, we've come to realise that the Java toc isn't really an option for it; it's way too flaky, sometimes refusing to load entirely. So for our current relese, due out in a few days, I suspect I'm going to have to try modifying the javascript to add browser detection for specifically for FF3 and to use the DHTML toc for it, but also to disable toc syncing (but only for FF3). Neither of those things are particularly difficult to pull off and I can post the code changes if anyone's desperate.

Cheers,

Robert

Leon,

I should have addressed my comment to Raven, who wrote:

I am having this exact same effect - I am sure what CraigularGuy means is . . . and he has associated the book with the first topic of the topics in the book).


Craig isn't doing this, but it sounds like Raven is.

I wouldn't get too angry at Mozilla just yet.

And we need to give Craig some time to respond to my requests yesterday for clarification.

Harvey

What is the purpose of having the book link to a topic and a page within the book linking to the same topic?

Harvey

Your impression is way out. Since Adobe came on the scene, they have listened more to users like you and I than Macromedia ever did.

Follow this link and submit what you want. We have found putting it in a friendly way works. :-)

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

OK,

Your first message referred to the "associated parent topic." From the latest response, I gather that you are referring to the main default topic, the one that appears when you first open WebHelp from the launch file, myproject.htm.

As I understand it now, your search results and index keywords do open the appropriate topic, which is linked to a book, but the default topic immediately replaces it, as though you had clicked on its TOC entry.

Is that right?

Have you tried the Firefox 3 upgrade?
Have you installed the latest update for RH 7? If so, the "About" popup will show V 7.02.001.

Next: Is the default topic at the top of the TOC, standing by itself? If it's lower down -- by itself or inside a book -- try moving it to the top.

If that doesn't fix the problem, try removing one of the book links to a topic and insert a new TOC page for that topic. When a search result or index term opens the topic, does the problem persist?

Good luck.

Harvey

Are you linking to the same topic from the book and from a page within the book? In that case, TOC sync will go to the book.


Harvey

Welcome to the forum.

When you say "landed", do you mean "linked"?

That problem has been posted before and the answer was to remove links from the books. Thought that had been fixed but not sure.