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Several issues in RH 2019 new UI

New Here ,
May 01, 2019 May 01, 2019

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Hi everyone,

I migrated a project from RH2017 to RH2019, new UI, some time ago and would like to report several issues I've encountered while working in the new Robohelp 2019 (update 6, new UI) and also provide some feedback about the new UI. I'm also curious about your experience regarding these.

  • Abnormally long output generation time. The output for a project with about 75 topics is generated in approx. 2-3 minutes. This is super frustrating. The project is converted from the Classic version; maybe this has something to do with it. The demo project is generated in 5-10 seconds, but it's not nearly as big. It would help if the log was shown during generation, not after, to pinpoint the problem. In the Classic version, even a much bigger project could be generated in less than 1 minute.
  • Right-clicking a book in TOC, and selecting Properties results in an error (in the left pane): Robohelp has run into an error. Please save your unsaved changes and restart ...
  • General performance slowing down over time while working, sometimes resulting in a generic error (Robohelp has run into an error. Please save your unsaved changes and restart ...). Restarting the application helps, but have to do it every 30 minutes or so. On the whole, the new UI is much less responsive than the Classic UI.
  • Managing the Topic List report is inconvenient. Due to the bigger font, much less information can be crammed into the working area. If I need to resize both the Topic and Title columns, resizing one also affects the other making it hard to see the full title or topic file name if it is rather big.
  • Inability to customize the layout/skin in CSS files. Since this is no longer available, it would be nice to see more options in the UI. For example, two crucial issues in the Indigo layout for me, which I had to fix by editing the CSS files before, are the content area being too narrow and the medium/long TOC book titles being cut. Would be fantastic if some options were added to customize this in the UI. If I add the old edited css files as user assets in the new Indigo skin editor, the expanded content area and full TOC book titles are still there, but this conflicts with other skin features and skin updates.
  • Lack of advanced search through multiple topics. One of the most useful features in the Classic version was the Advanced search, which helped find or find and replace text or code throughout the whole project. The current search (only text and only in the current topic) is rather limited. I know this is planned to be added in the future, but it is quite important in my opinion. For now, I have to resort to other external search apps for this.

I hope these issues will be looked at and addressed in future updates.

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Community Expert ,
May 01, 2019 May 01, 2019

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Thanks for helping me find the "Find in page" option. I've been resorting to using a text editor to find content in even single topics I will say, now that I've tried it, I do briefly get an odd popover that suggests there is a more complex search dialog box in the background, so why it isn't exposed is curious... (It flashes up too quickly for me to get a screenshot.

I definitely agree the search needs improvement. Searching multiple files by only title or file name is really limiting. And then only being able to open them (and one by one) is frustrating. So I'll probably continue to use an external text editor to search.

And I really, really hate that error message - there is absolutely no indication of what caused it, so the best you can say when you report a problem is "I was typing in the page and I got this error". I do believe there is now an error log in Update 6, so that might be something that can help. I don't currently have Update 6, so I'm not sure if it's human readable or solely designed for Adobe developers.

You can report all the issues you find here:

Tracker

[Edited for grammar]

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LEGEND ,
May 01, 2019 May 01, 2019

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I fired up Camtasia screen recorder and captured a frame showing this dialog.

frame.png

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Community Expert ,
May 01, 2019 May 01, 2019

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That's the one! Thanks Rick!

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Adobe Employee ,
May 01, 2019 May 01, 2019

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@Djkjckdm​

Thanks for the feedback and details above.

  • Abnormally long output generation time. The output for a project with about 75 topics is generated in approx. 2-3 minutes. This is super frustrating. The project is converted from the Classic version; maybe this has something to do with it. The demo project is generated in 5-10 seconds, but it's not nearly as big. It would help if the log was shown during generation, not after, to pinpoint the problem. In the Classic version, even a much bigger project could be generated in less than 1 minute.

Can you share the sample project with us so we can look into this. You could send the same at amisingh@adobe.com

  • Right-clicking a book in TOC, and selecting Properties results in an error (in the left pane): Robohelp has run into an error. Please save your unsaved changes and restart ...

This is being fixed and will be available in an update by tomorrow. Update 7 would be available for download via Help -> updates in next 24-30 hours.

  • General performance slowing down over time while working, sometimes resulting in a generic error (Robohelp has run into an error. Please save your unsaved changes and restart ...). Restarting the application helps, but have to do it every 30 minutes or so. On the whole, the new UI is much less responsive than the Classic UI.

We will look into this further. Please try once with update 7 and let us know your feedback

  • Managing the Topic List report is inconvenient. Due to the bigger font, much less information can be crammed into the working area. If I need to resize both the Topic and Title columns, resizing one also affects the other making it hard to see the full title or topic file name if it is rather big.

Thanks for the feedback. Let us look into this and see how this can further be improved.

  • Inability to customize the layout/skin in CSS files. Since this is no longer available, it would be nice to see more options in the UI. For example, two crucial issues in the Indigo layout for me, which I had to fix by editing the CSS files before, are the content area being too narrow and the medium/long TOC book titles being cut. Would be fantastic if some options were added to customize this in the UI. If I add the old edited css files as user assets in the new Indigo skin editor, the expanded content area and full TOC book titles are still there, but this conflicts with other skin features and skin updates.

Can you share some of the feedback and specific areas where you are facing issue and we can address in an upcoming update.

  • Lack of advanced search through multiple topics. One of the most useful features in the Classic version was the Advanced search, which helped find or find and replace text or code throughout the whole project. The current search (only text and only in the current topic) is rather limited. I know this is planned to be added in the future, but it is quite important in my opinion. For now, I have to resort to other external search apps for this.

Thanks

Amitoj Singh

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Adobe Employee ,
May 01, 2019 May 01, 2019

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On topic list, can you try clicking this option to hide the filters panel so you have more space.

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Adobe Employee ,
May 01, 2019 May 01, 2019

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Explorer ,
May 02, 2019 May 02, 2019

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LATEST

@Amitoj Thanks for the replies!

On topic list, can you try clicking this option to hide the filters panel so you have more space.

Thank you for the tip. This is a good workaround. I'm struggling with the columns only when there are a lot of filters turned on. I believe this is because there is no scrollbar and they all have to fit in.

Can you share the sample project with us so we can look into this. You could send the same at amisingh@adobe.com

Yes, I will send it to you with more details.

Can you share some of the feedback and specific areas where you are facing issue and we can address in an upcoming update.

Yes, sure. I already mentioned the specific areas, but I'll try to elaborate with examples. Both areas are related to the Indigo or Coffee skin.

1) In the skin editor, there is no option to have the TOC book titles on the home page fully displayed. At present, if the TOC book title is medium/long, only the first few words are displayed with an ellipsis (see the example below). It would be great to have an option in the skin editor to choose how TOC titles are shown.

TOC_book_title_name_cut.png

2) The width of the content area is a bit too narrow on desktop, and there is no setting to set it up in the skin editor. It would be nice to have the ability to adjust it for the skin.

Narrow_content_area.png

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