ToC is collapsed when Responsive Help is opened & Page refreshes when a topic is selected

[ancamitroi]

Hi, I am using RoboHelp HTML 11, to create content sensitive help for a web application. I am generating my output (!SSL!) using Responsive HTML5.

Recently, my program started to behave odd and I encountered the following problems after generating my output (I must say that I did not make any changes regarding my layout preferences or any other changes in general):

1. When I open the Help window from the application, the Table of Contents is initially collapsed. If I expand it and close the Help window and re-open it, the Table of Contents is now expanded. I need it to be expanded when the Help window opens and remain expanded, unless the user chooses to collapse it. Any idea how I can fix this problem?

2. When navigating through the Table of Contents and selecting a topic, the page quickly refreshes before the topic content is displayed. The Table of Contents "flickers" before the topic is displayed. Before this used to happen, I could smoothly navigate through the ToC (the topics opened without being refreshed, the ToC was not flickering).

Also, I observed that the structure of the links to the topics has changed in the browser. I compared an older version of the help project, in which I did not encounter these problems with the problematic version. So here are the links (I opened the Help locally, from my !SSL! folder, not from the application):

Okay version:

D:/My%20Project/!SSL!/Responsive_HTML5/index.htm#t=My_Chapter%2FMy_Topic.htm

Flickering version:

D:\My Project\!SSL!\Responsive_HTML5\My Chapter\My_Topic.htm

3. Some topic links (in the browser) have an ending that I did notice before: D:/My Project/!SSL!/Responsive_HTML5/index.htm#t=My_Chapter%2FMy_Topic.htm%23bc-2&rhtocid=13.4_4 - is this normal?

Sorry for the long post and for the fact that I covered three problems at once. I'll split them, if necessary.
Thank you!

[Peter Grainge]

I'm not sure I can help much here but in the absence of any other response...

I am assuming that if you open the help directly, it always opens with the TOC contracted so the issue is with the call rather than the output itself. Calling help is on the developer side rather than the authoring side. Unfortunately the support on this forum comes from the authoring side, myself included.

On my site there are some pages on calling help and in particular there are links to Willam van Weelden's site where he has some pages on calling HTML5 help. I hope something there will be of use to you.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

[ancamitroi]

Before these 3 behaviors started occurring simultaneously, my ToC used to always be expanded when I called Help. And remained expanded until the user decided to collapse it.

[Willam_van_Weelden]

I'm a bit late to the party, but perhaps I can help a little.

Which version of RoboHelp 11 do you have? There were some changes made to the behaviour in one of the patches, so make sure to be on the latest version. Another thing is that you have to manually *update* the screen layouts to take advantage of the changes. Simply add the layout to the project again from the gallery. (In the Output Set-up pod.)

1. Does this only occur with a CSH call? Or also when you open the help through the start?

2. This flickering is an issue solved in one of the patches. Note that you need to add the screen layout from the gallery again to get rid of the flickering.

3. This is normal. This is how RH knows which topic to show in the TOC. Especially when you have one topic multiple times in the TOC, this is what helps distinguishing one TOC entry from another.

[ancamitroi]

I'm using RoboHelp 11.0.4 and the sudden behaviors started occurring without any updates to my program.

1. Yes, this does occur only when I call help from the web application (after Help has been integrated in the application).

Worth mentioning that this happens only the first time I call the Help. Meaning:
   i. I enter my application and I call Help > ToC is collapsed. I expand the ToC and close Help.

   ii. I call help again. This time, the ToC is expanded

If I open the Help locally (!SSL! > index.htm), the ToC is expanded.

2. I tried to "manually" update the layouts, meaning that I cleared my !ScreenLayout! folder, re-populated it and imported the layout again in RoboHelp. I rebuilt the project, but the output is the same, the ToC still flickers. Maybe I did not understand correctly how to "update" the screen layout?

Thank you for the reply, William!

[ancamitroi]

I just updated to the newest version and it works like a charm - the ToC doesn't flicker anymore.
I don't know about the collapsed ToC, because the integration of Help within the application won't happen anytime soon, so I cannot re-test that behavior.

Thank you for your time, William!