Skin navigation issues

[dm_gpc]

I created a RH5 help system for a POS application and applied the Chrisi skin.

When the help is called from the Help menu the skin's Contents, Index, Search, and Glossary buttons appear as does the company's logo for the Help About button.

However, when the context sensitive help icon or help icon is clicked the skin's interface does not appear.

What appears, I believe, is the default interface which contains tabs for the Contents, Index, Search, and Glossary and of course no Help About button.

I converted this system to RH7 and it still appears the same way. I believed that this was a developer issue and logged a bug for the developers quite a long time ago.

Any one have any clues?

Donna

[Peter Grainge]

You need to prove this is the way the developers are calling the CSH and that is quite easy. See the article on my site Calling WebHelp Using URLs and construct a link to a CSH topic using the startpage.htm#path/cshtopic.htm method.

As it will be local, I suggest you open IE and go to File > Open and navigate to the startpage. Use that as the startpage part of the link you are constructing. Close IE, work out the rest of the path and then reopen IE and use that path.

That should open the topic with the skin, TOC etc.

Now double click a CSH topic in Windows Explorer. It will open with a Show link top left. Click that and you should see the skin.

Assuming both tests have worked, then the problem with the call from the application is down to the developers. I doubt it is a bug, just something they have not got right.

[dm_gpc]

Thank you for your reply. I am still a little confused on how to test. My start page on my hard drive is located at : C:\CompiledHelp\Dev131\Help\en\index.htm. One of the CSH topics (FrmTAMS_Menu.htm) is located under the same directory path. So how would the link to a CSH topic using the startpage.htm#path/cshtopic.htm method look like?

I retested the help, which is attached to the application, on one of the test servers. This is what I found:
When calling help from the Help menu the URL in IE7 appears as http://00.00.00.100/help/en/index.htm. Everything displays like a charm.

A sample context sensitive help topic appears as: http://00.00.00.100:0000/TAMSII/Servlets/online_help.html?language=en&form=InvoicePanel. (no htm at the end)

My help topic is named InvoicePanel.htm


Thanks

Donna

[Peter Grainge]

Put the line below in IE.

C:\CompiledHelp\Dev131\Help\en\index.htm#FrmTAMS_Menu.htm

That should open your CSH topic with the skin. If it does, the rest is for your developers to sort out.

[dm_gpc · Accepted solution]

It works, so I'll pass it back to the developers.

Thanks