RH 9: MiniTOC does not show in FireFox 9.0.1 on a webserver

[gingeroni]

The WebHelp miniTOC does not show in FireFox 9.0.0 on a webserver but works fine with IE or in FireFox from a local file.

I am NOT using merged help.

I am using a master page with the code from http://www.wvanweelden.eu to always show the navigation pane.

I thought it might be the same problem that was reported as item 12 on http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/rh8/using_rh8.htm, but the topic page does not contain any reference to ehlpdhtm.js, and I'm using RH 9.

Has anyone else seen this?

Update: The search and index functions aren't working either when opening pages from a webserver. (Search opens a search field, but it doesn't find any results, even though Search works fine with local files.)

I installed Firebug. From looking at the console (this is all new to me, so I don't know if I'm including the right information), it looks like my browser has posted a request  to my server but is not getting a response. But maybe it already encountered an error and is just asking the server for more information?

GET https://svcdevss.xxxxx.com/doc/private/error.htm

Headers (with my company name replaced in paths):

Accept-Ranges	bytes
Content-Encoding	gzip
Content-Length	674
Content-Type	text/html
Date	Sat, 18 Feb 2012 08:13:27 GMT
Etag	"4bd-4b7deaecaed80"
Last-Modified	Wed, 01 Feb 2012 03:29:10 GMT
Server	Apache
Vary	Accept-Encoding,User-Agent

Request Headers

Accept	text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Encoding	gzip, deflate
Accept-Language	en-us,en;q=0.5
Connection	keep-alive
Host	svcdevss.foo.com
Referer	https://svcdevss.foo.com/Help/Main/ad/hres/network/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whskin_....htm
User-Agent	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:10.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0.1

[gingeroni]

Update: I got some help from our webmaster.

He compared the logs on the web server. He said it looks like FF doesn't recover after it doesn't find the contentlist.xml file.

Internet Explorer 8:

Result          URL

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/order_process.htm

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whver.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whutils.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whstub.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whmsg.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whstart.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whskin_tbars.htm

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whskin_frmset01.htm

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whver.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whtbar.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whutils.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whproxy.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whmozemu.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whmsg.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whver.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/wht_toc_n.gif

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/wht_idx_n.gif

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/wht_fts_n.gif

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/wht_go.gif

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whskin_frmset010.htm

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/order_process/search_purchase_orders/search_purchase_orders.htm

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whmsg.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whver.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whutils.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whproxy.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/order_process/search_purchase_orders/search_purchase_orders.css

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whlang.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whtopic.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whskin_mbars.htm

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whskin_pdhtml.htm

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/order_process/search_purchase_orders/Inbox_Adv_Search_PO_All_Criteria.jpg

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/order_process/search_purchase_orders/Inbox_Basic_Search.jpg

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/order_process/search_purchase_orders/TableIcon.jpg

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/xmlreadhelper.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whmsg.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whver.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whutils.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whmozemu.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whproxy.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whtbar.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whphost.js

302          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/contentlist.xml

200          /doc/private/error.htm

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/wht_hide.gif

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whproj.xml

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whtdhtml.htm

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whver.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whmozemu.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whmsg.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whproxy.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whthost.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whxdata/whtoc.xml

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whxdata/whtdata0.xml

FireFox:

Result          URL

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/order_process.htm

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whver.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whutils.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whmsg.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whstart.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whstub.js

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whstart.ico

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whskin_tbars.htm

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whstart.ico

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whskin_frmset01.htm

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whskin_frmset010.htm

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/order_process/search_purchase_orders/search_purchase_orders.htm

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whskin_pdhtml.htm

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whskin_mbars.htm

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whproj.xml

302          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/contentlist.xml

200          /Help/Main/ad/hres/anetwork/en/documentation/transactions/Orders/html/whtdhtml.htm

[Willam van Weelden]

Hi,

The contentlist.xml  holds the available outputs of the Dynamic User Centric Content (DUCC). But it is only present when you use DUCC. The script may still check for the file.

Can you try to create a dummy contentlist.xml and provide that in your output? You can try whether an empty file works. Otherwise, just ask your developers to make an empty xml file based on a contentlist.xml from a project with DUCC.

Greet,

Willam

[gingeroni]

Thanks for responding!

I added a contentlist.xml file with the following content to get past the 302:

   <?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8' ?>

This seemed to get past the 302 problem. Unfortunately, FireBug now shows that FireFox doesn't send anything after receiving whproj.xml. The contents of whproj.xml seem fine:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8' ?>
<project homepage="order_process/search_purchase_orders/search_purchase_orders.htm" langid="1033" datapath="whxdata" 
 toc="whtoc.xml" index="whidx.xml" fts="whfts.xml" brs="whbrs.xml" >
</project>

If I look at the contents of whdata/whtoc.xml and whdata/whtdata0.xml they look fine.

I don't know if whutils.js is building a path that FireFox can't use? But I don't even see FireFox trying to ask for any of the above files.

Is there possibly a problem in whskin_pdhtml.htm? Or do the facts that I get a mini nav bar (albeit an empty bar) and that it was received a few transactions back from the last HTTP request/response indicate that whskin_pdhtml.htm is OK?

I also installed slashy, a FireFox plugin that's supposed to handle backslashes in file paths, but this made no difference.

I also re-built the RH project with the default skin and removed the JS code on the master page to show the nav bar on topic pages (sorry, WvW!). This made no difference.

[gingeroni]

Update: The Adobe support rep took my files and loaded it on a couple of their web servers and was able to view the TOC with no problems.

I went back to our web engineers and our website app was setting the content type for XML files to plain text. The took this code out and now the TOC and nav bars works fine.

[Peter Grainge]

Thanks for posting the solution. Always appreciated.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge