RoboHelp 2019 and IE11 + HTML5 Responsive Project Generation Time

[Simon23475742ts1q]

1. We have a RoboHelp 2019 (New) project which is accessed from a WebLogic application - whilst many users are able to access the help, some cannot (simply getting the four rotating squares) - any troubeleshooting advice would be appreciated.

2. It takes a lot longer to generate the HTML5 Responsive project files (c.20-25 mins) than it did using our previous RoboHelp HTML 11 software (c.2-3 mins) - any ideas why it would take so long and what is it doing when it states 'patching' every single topic?

Thanks in advance

Simon

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Is your RH2019 version all patched up? If so, you might want to check with a demo download of RH2020 to see if the issues have been resolved. RH2019 isn't getting any new fixes now unless it's really severe.

[Simon23475742ts1q]

Hi - thanks for really swift response - and yes, we're on 2019.0.14 (which I believe is the latest); we wanted to use RH2020 but, unfortunately, and due to the nature of the project and development environment, we required offline activation which is no longer supported for RH2020.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Did you check with the RH folks directly on that one? I'd recommend using the tcssup@adobe.com e-mail address as it reaches a team dedicated to Technical Communication Suite products including RoboHelp (and isn't the general Support lines).

[Simon23475742ts1q]

Thanks - I'll give that a try...

[Amebr]

Regarding the "patching" message, it just means "generating" really. I'm sure it has some specific meaning for the developers, but for us "generating' or 'processing' is what it amounts to. 🙂

I wonder if the failure to load could be a caching issue. Did you publish your new output to the same location as the old RH11 output? If so, perhaps the users who get the rotating squares have some old files cached which are incompatible with the new format, so it can't load. Can get a user who is experiencing the problem to clear their browser cache and see if it works afterwards? 

[Simon23475742ts1q]

Hi - thanks for the response and yes, we thought it might have been a caching issue but a hard browser refresh has not resolved the issue (for some users) so we're a little stumped...

[Peter Grainge]

1. In the thread title you mention IE11 but in the body you refer to RoboHelp 11. Is IE11 involved in this issue?
2. The generation time does seem excessive and maybe indicative of a problem. Have you tried creating a new preset, not a duplicate?
3. Have you looked at the Reports to see if anything there seems wrong?
4. Are you generating to a network drive?

________________________________________________________

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

[Simon23475742ts1q]

Hi, Peter - thanks for response - briefly:

1. Yes, IE11 is involved - our users have a mixture of Edge Chromium and IE11 browsers - some users can succesfully access the help using IE11, others can't - are there any known issues using IE11 with RH2019?

2. No haven't tried that - will give it a go and let you know.

3. You could be onto something there - reports indicate a large number of unreferenced topics (some of which are unreferenced, others of which definitely aren't) - perhaps re-creating the project might be an idea...

4. No - to a local drive.

To be honest, the slow generation is more of an inconvenience whereas the inability of some users to access the help is the far bigger problem.

[Peter Grainge]

I believe IE11's compatibility mode could be involved here. Get the users having a problem with IE11 to check their settings.

It looks like you have not picked up on the big change in how the new versions generate. In Classic all topics got generated unless they got tagged out. In the new versions nothing gets generated unless it is in the TOC. That does not mean all topics have to show there in what the user see, simply they have to be included in what you see there. There is a HIDE option. It's explained here. RH2019 Table of Contents (grainge.org)

________________________________________________________

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