CHM File Not Displaying Correctly in Hosted Environment

[Jarett5555]

I use RoboHelp to generate a .chm (Microsoft HTML Help) used in our application's on-premise and hosted environment. Recently, we have been slowly moving users to a new hosted environment (GoGlobal), and those users have been reporting issues with the online help file. Namely, content properties such as font and headers are not what they should be, and internal links to images display an error message.

See below:

We are finding that hosted users in the old environment (Remote Desktop) are not experiencing this issue. 

Can this be resolved in RoboHelp? Should I be exporting a different file? Or should I pass this along to the team migrating the users to the new hosted environment? 

Any feedback is appreciated! 

[Jeff_Coatsworth · Accepted solution]

Well, frankly you're using antique technology and it's a wonder it even works at all. My suspicion is that you need to tweak the server in the new environment to match the old one. CHMs and servers required some settings to permit them to run (most of which are security issues for most IT people).

[Peter Grainge]

@Jeff_Coatsworth The old tweaks no longer work to allow a CHM to run on a network.

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My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[Peter Grainge]

Nineteen years ago Microsoft made changes for security reasons so that CHMs would only work if installed locally. Initially there were ways you could make them work on a network if IT were happy with the risks. That changed and now it is desktop installations only. See CHM Files Not Working on Network (grainge.org)

I think you will need to change to an online output such as frameless. Going forward Adobe will be focussing development on frameless outputs so I recommend considering frameless templates for your project. Other than bug fixes, it is unlikely there will be any changes to HTML5 outputs. The calls for frameless outputs are different using URLs so you need to discuss that with your developers if you use context sensitive help.

You haven't said which version of RoboHelp you are using. Please always start a thread with this information.

• Please go to Help > About and include the full version number.
• If you are using 2019 also state whether it is 2019 Classic or 2019 New UI.

Frameless is an option from 2019 New UI onwards and we are now up to 2022. If your help is context sensitive, the developers will have to change the calls.

The new UI is very different and is explained on my site. See the link to the RoboHelp Tour.

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[Jarett5555]

Apologies for omitting the version number. 

I'm on RoboHelp Version 2022.0.346 and using the New UI. 

I'm currently generating Frameless to see what we get. 

[Amebr · Accepted solution]

The latest version is 2022.3. You can see the bug fixes here: https://helpx.adobe.com/robohelp/kb/fixed-issues.html

And the new features in the What's New section of the TOC.