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K
kmaddox1
Inspiring
January 17, 2013
Answered

issue with RH10, Zoomsearch, and Firefox

  • January 17, 2013
  • 1 reply
  • 2501 views

We are having an issue with Robohelp 10, ZoomSearch, and Firefox. Here's what is going on:

Last year, we successfully implemented Zoom Search on a merged helpsystem on  RoboHelp 9 (WebHelp layout and Java search). Everything worked as described in IE, Firefox, and Chrome and people liked the new search.

This month, we upgraded the entire help system to Robohelp 10 and followed the same steps to implement ZoomSearch on the published files. Everything works exactly as before with IE and Chrome, and the parent and child help systems display just fine in Firefox. All good news.

However, when we click the Zoom Search button from the parent project using a Firefox browser, things stop working. The right-hand frame momentarily displays "Search loading, please wait," followed by a blank page, and the browser goes into in an endless "Connecting" loop.  That is, it appears that something in the redirect from search_options_redirect.htm (the file attached to the Search button in the parent project's skin) does not work using RH10 and Firefox even though the same redirect works in IE, Chrome, and Windows Explorer.

When we run Firebug in Firefox, Firebug displays the following error:

Error: Permission denied to access property 'whname'

file:///C:/RTPONEDocumentation/OneHelp/generate/mergedProjects/RTPOneAdministrationUsersGuide/whproxy.js

Line 10

This error is repeated endlessly. RTPOneAdministration is the main project for the search.

I don't know enough about js files to debug the problem but I'm suspecting there's something in the RH10 version of this file that FIrefox doesn't like.  It does appear that the RH9 version of whproxy.js is different than the RH 10 whproxy.js.

Can anyone suggest how to address this problem? I really don't want to have to tell our customers that they can no longer use Search if they are using Firefox.

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Peter Grainge

Kathy

One solution if all else fails would be for your developers to look at something like Server2Go. That creates a web server environment on any drive. Not sure if it would be 100% satisfactory, you would have to test that.

I will take a look at some other options that have occurred to me but that will not be for a little while.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge


Woo hoo! I do believe I have resolved the problem.

What puzzles me is the solution is something I had to introduce in my Merged Help instructions for RoboHelp 7 when Firefox 3.0.9 caused a problem. Why it has only just surfaced in Rh10  is one of life's mysteries.

Take a look at Adding a Redirect at http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/merging_webhelp/merging_method_rh9.htm#5

At the moment your parent project has a meta tag

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=./mergedProjects/child_1/search_files/search_options.htm" /

You need to delete that.

Immediately above the closing </head> tag, then add

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">//<![CDATA[

<!--Script courtesy of http://www.web-source.net - Your Guide to Professional Web Site Design and Development //-->

var time = null

function move() {

window.location = './mergedProjects/child_1/search_files/search_options.htm'

}

//]]></script>

Please do not remove the credit, it is a condition of use.

Then amend the <body> tag to read

<body onload="timer=setTimeout('move()',100)">

It should only take a few minutes and after that I think you will find it all works correctly in FF, IE and Chrome.

Please confirm that it works for you and I will then amend my instructions.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

1 reply

Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 17, 2013

I will upgrade a project that uses ZoomSearch to Rh10 and see what happens. It is evening here though so it will not be today.

Is this problem occurring with the help both locally and on the server?

Does the problem still occur with Firebug disabled? It would not be the first time webhelp has hit issues with Firebug enabled.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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K
kmaddox1Author
Inspiring
January 17, 2013

Thank you, Peter! I was just remarking to my co-worker that I hoped that we might get some sort of helpful reply from Peter Grainge tomorrow...but you beat my prediction by a day!

The issue appears to happen whether or not Firebug is on. We only turned on Firebug after we initially saw the problem to see if we could get more information. I did Google the error message "Permission denied to access property" and found some Firefox-related hits, but I'm not savvy enough to understand what the developers were saying. Something about redirects, using the same domain, and iframes if that's helpful.

The issue occurs in two different help systems and on two different local computers, but we have not yet published the RH10 version to our network server.  We can try that today and let you know what happens.  We've also tried implementing ZoomSearch in the Generate folder with the same results.

Thanks again for your speedy reply. I look forward to hearing your results.

Kathy

Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 18, 2013

I am seeing the same problem running the test locally but once it is uploaded to the server it works as it should.

It does seem to be specific to merged help so it would help me if you can provide a link to whichever site you thought explained it best.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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