Skins Don't Appear When Viewing a Published Project

Report · Jul 07, 2011

Hi,

Help, please! We've just upgraded our help projects to Author and Server 8, from author 7. When we build and publish to the server, the skin doesn't appear. We've published from Author 7 to Server 8 without this problem. It's just been happening since the upgrade.

We've tried creating a new default window, using the default skin, and publishing using the primary layout (WebHelp Pro). Same outcome. If we choose the option to show the Navigation Pane in topics. The link appears and when clicked, the skin appears along with the ToC, Index, etc. (On a side note, when we display the skin via the link we don't have the problem with the Table of Contents where it hits a three-layer TOC and then doesn't show any topics after that in the book.)

Any ideas on the skin issue? Your help is great appreciated.

Dee

Report · Jul 08, 2011

Hi Dee.

This sounds like you are calling the help to display only the topic content. If you want to display the tri-pane (TOC, Index, Search tabs) you have to ensure the help call is correct. Can you speak to your developers about this. They may want to refer to Peter Grainge's site which has some excellent information about calling help. It refers to WebHelp but also applies to WebHelp Pro. You can find it here.

The RoboColum(n)

@robocolumn

Colum McAndrew

Report · Jul 11, 2011

Hi Colum,

I don't think how the help is called is the issue. We are using the same call as when we published from RH7 Author to RoboServer 8. Here is the syntax we're using to call help directly, outside our application: http://bot-robohelp8.dev.bot.corp.amsworld.com:8080/robohelp/server?prj=SAINTERNAL (Example only...server is internal, behind our intranet firewall.)The Help appeared correctly - Skin, TOC, etc.

Our problems began when we upgraded the help projects from Author 7 to Author 8. Using the exact same files to build and publish, no skin when we called Help. This is happening in two different help projects so we thought 1) something changed when the window and skin files were converted to RH8 Author (we've been using the same window and skin since version x5); or 2) RH8 Author publishing to Server 8 requires something we're unaware of. To eliminate #1 we created new windows and skin for testing....same problem.

We've been using RH since the Blue Sky days. We can usually figure out our problems, but this one really has us stumped.

Dee

Report · Jul 12, 2011

Dee there were some major code changes between RoboHelp versions 7 and 8 - I assume that is what you mean by "Author" 7 & * btw. It could be that this is at the heart of the issue. Is the issue limited to this one skin? What happens if you use one of the skins available here. If one of these work, you've narrowed the problem down to your skin. Now you'll need to find out what exactly is causing the issue. Perhaps you can start by telling us the skin file name and whether there is anything unusual about it. If you'd like, you can send the skin file to me and I can use it on a test project here. My email address is available from my forum profile.

The RoboColum(n)

@robocolumn

Colum McAndrew