Desperate for help with the skin editor

[martinl83372021]

Hi, Everyone.

I'm looking for detailed documentation of how to configure a frameless skin in the skin editor. Adobe tech support has not been able to point me to any documentation or tutorial that I'm not already familiar with.

I'm willing to buy a book. But neither I nor my employer are willing to spend $750 on a training course.

Here's everything I've studied. None of it goes beyond even the most basic instruction for using the skin editor:

• Adobe RH 2019 Help Manual
• Adobe RH 2019 User Guide (online)
• TutorialsPoint RH Guide
• Peter Grainge's "tour" of RH 2019
• the PFA User guide ("Using RH 2017")
• Adobe Demo #1: "RoboHelp Reimagined" (Quick Start tutorial)
• Adobe Demo #2: "Upgrading and Advanced Features"
• Matt Sullivan video:  Tech Comm Tools Tutorial for RH 2019 
• Neil Perlin:  RH 2015 (LinkedIn Learning)
• RH 9 (LinkedIn Learning)

Thank you.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

How about Kevin's https://www.iconlogic.com/adobe-robohelp-2019-essentials-workbook.html

[martinl83372021]

Nice. Thank you, Jeff.

Will order it.

[martinl83372021]

Well, though grateful for Jeff's suggestion, I've just bought the Kindle edition of the IconLogic book. And it too is incredibly thin on detail. It certainly has brought me no closer to successfully configuring a frameless skin using the skin editor.

I'm pretty much ready to give up on RH. I don't know what to tell me boss. She invested in the software on my say so.  But I'm at my wits end. I've burned forty man hours and have made zero progress -- worse, I've actually destroyed what I had accomplished in the past week.

Last week, I succeeded in placing a great background image and logo into the skin homepage (Oceanic). But since then, b/c there's no documentation to go by for further refinements, my trial-and-error process has wrecked what I had accomplished last week. The background image and logo no longer display. And I have no idea how to remedy what destruction I've wrought.

[Peter Grainge]

Stay calm. I'll respond in the morning and see if we can get you back on track. Some detail about what you are trying to achieve with what skin and version of RoboHelp will help.

[Amebr]

My pro tip is don't go by what you see in the skin preview pane (it seems a bit buggy to me). Generate and check in the browser.

[Peter Grainge]

I'm pretty much ready to give up on RH. I don't know what to tell me boss. She invested in the software on my say so.  

No need to tell her anything because you should be able to achieve whatever you want or something close enough. You already proved that by changing the image as you did in another thread.

Books and Courses - The problem is that when a release comes out, it then takes a lot of time to get anything to market. With the big authoring tools regularly upgrading, a book can be out of date in months at best. The business model isn't there, particularly given how the authoring market has shrunk over the years. What can be done is introductory level stuff and even that is difficult. Kevin is one of the few managing to keep it going. As the title of his book says, it is the essentials, not the whole lot.

The other issue is that the skins and indeed the whole product evolve. The only way is being thrown in at the deep end or paying for a custom course but really that's not what you need, all you want is how the heck do I make a specific change or changes. You don't need to know about fields that don't affect what you want.

So start here by confirming you are still working on Oceanic giving us some information about what you want to change from the basic. Also tell us how badly wrecked things are at the moment so that we can work out if it's easier to start again or if a repair is possible.

[martinl83372021]

Hi, Everyone,

And thank you, especially to Peter, for all the encouragement. Sorry to make you expend energy talking me down from the ledge. 🙂  I do see you're right -- that it's nowhere near hopeless. Thanks!

I'll be back soon with details/screenshots of what I'm trying to accomplish. 

[martinl83372021]

Hi, and thanks, again for all the help.

Here's what I'm trying to do.

Screenshot 1 shows the header of my generated home page (Oceanic). Last week, I had successfully inserted (a) a background image in the header and (b) a logo. But after adjusting some TOC tile settings, the background image and header no longer display. I have tried re-inserting the image files. I've also moved both my RH project files folder and the original asset files to my C-drive. (They had been stored on a network, last week.) Still, no joy.

Screenshot 2 focuses on the TOC tiles, below the header of my home page. I'm trying to adjust the layout. Currently, the tile rows are too close together. The TOC tile titles (the text below each tile) are obscured by the next row of tiles. 

Plus, there's actually a second problem:  each of these titles are spaced to far beneath its tile (see Screenshot 3, in which I've reduced the total tiles to just one single row to show this spatial issue).

Thank you!

SCREENSHOT 1

---------------------------------------------

SCREENSHOT 2

SCREENSHOT 3:

[martinl83372021]

PS:  I've just noticed one other malfunction -- the navigation icons along the right-hand margin have gone blank (circled in Screenshot 4).

SCREENSHOT 4

 

[Amebr]

Two other questions.

Do you have a custom css file in the User Assets section of the skin?

Did you modify the LayoutDiff.css stylesheet in the Oceanic skin in a text editor?

[Peter Grainge]

Sorry for not responding. I have just realised that I am not getting emails from the forum, I had been sitting here thinking things were quiet.

I will look at your replies later today.

[Peter Grainge]

Had to smile as I hit that recently and as it wasn't too much of an issue for me, I decided to leave it for a while.

In the skin editor, Home Page the text is positioned within the area for the tiles. Trouble is when you reduce the height of the area, the text doesn't move with it. That is what is giving you these issues that so far I have not been able to fix.

I have asked the experts and will let you know asap.

****************************************

On the blank navigation images, I have not seen that happen. Try another browser would be the first thing, then check you haven't somehow removed them from the skin.

[martinl83372021]

Hi, Peter.

No apology needed. That sounds promising.

For now, I'm gonna have to contact Adobe for a new issue -- my RH project is suddenly unable to generate output. 

Will be back after chatting with them.

Thanks!

[Peter Grainge]

Is it hanging at Indexing References? If it is post back here.

[martinl83372021]

No, it's hanging at "Patching topic" -- same topic every time.  

And it hangs at that point on two different TOCs and on two different frameless output presets.

So, Adobe tech support says I either need to just abandon this project (and lose all my customizations) or test publish by deleting one topic at a time. (They think the problem is related to a specific topic. So I'll start with that topic I meantioned above where the generate process hangs. Gonna start that now.)

[Peter Grainge]

If it is hanging at just a few specific topics, then removing them from the TOC is a good plan.

Create a duplicate of the TOC first. It may be useful when you know where the problem is.

You can't just abandon projects. What if it were years of work? It's always a case of finding where the problem is. At worst you would create a new one but then lift large chunks from the old one bit by bit. Certainly on the skin side, you would export the skin to import it into another.

Don't even consider abandoning it without coming back here.

[martinl83372021]

Update:  I've decided to abandon that project and resume using an older copy. I'll lose a bunch of customizations from the past week. But I'm too afraid of that damaged project to try to troubleshoot it further.

Peter, I would still appreciate your help with the issue of the TOC tile titles being spaced far below the tile, itself.  Eager to hear what you learn from Adobe re. this issue.

But the issue of the background image & logo not displaying is now moot. (Same with the right-margin navigation buttons going blank.)

Thank you! 

[martinl83372021]

Ah!  Peter, I hadn't seen your previous comment before posting my update. 

I'll try what you suggest. Thanks for the specific details. 

Thanks! Will report back. 

[Peter Grainge]

I think I have a solution to the tile and title but I need to check it out. Tomorrow.

[martinl83372021]

Great, Peter. I look forward to it.

UPDATE:   So, I've been troubleshooting by Adobe's and your suggestion to duplicate the TOC and delete topics one-by-one, attempting to publish each time. 

No success. Each time, the generate process simply hangs on the next topic in the TOC. In the process, I've deleted over twenty topics and books. It's been time-consuming, without any sign of progress. 

With over 200+ topics left, I think I'll stop.

Thank you.

[Peter Grainge]

The answer you need for the tile sizing can be found in Item 16 at http://www.grainge.org/pages/snippets/snippets.htm#html5

I have posted it there as this is not the first time I have seen this question asked. Let me know if it works for you.

[Peter Grainge]

Let us know where you are with fixing the generation of the project.

[martinl83372021]

UPDATE re. UNABLE TO GENERATE:   

I've been troubleshooting by Adobe's and Peter's suggestion to first duplicate the TOC then delete topics, one-by-one, attempting to publish each time. (The generate process had been hanging on topic #3 in the TOC, so I started there.)

No success. Each time, the generate process simply hangs on the topic following the one I delete. In the process, I've deleted over twenty topics and books. That took 2 hours, with no sign of progress. 

With over 280+ topics left, I think I'll stop and abandon the project files. I will return to a backup of the project, which is a week old. 

[martinl83372021]

Wait. Scratch that last update.

Out of guilt feeling for Peter helping me so much with this issue, I decided to try one more thing. And now I'm able to generate!!!  Here's what I did.

I realized that yesterday I had left the first 2 topics in the TOC.  I.e., I deleted Topics #3 - #23 in the TOC, none of which helped me to generate output.

So, just now, what I did was I deleted Topics #1 and #2 in the TOC. And I was able to generate output, immediately.

Success!!!  Thanks very much, Peter!