RH7 Files Modified in Earlier Version Create Problems

[Eng__Editor]

Hi. I'm a new and not very proficient RH user developing my first project in RH7. I was asked to take over a project started by someone else (in RH5x, I think). I brought the files into RH7 and continued development, no problem. At a certain point I sent a copy of my files back to the app developer for his review. When he sent them back to me, he'd modified them in the old version of RH. Now, I seem to have two issues I can't figure out:

1) All my topics have little red boxes (which seem to be placeholders for scripts) at the beginning, end, and associated with some links. They apparently are related to breadcrumbing: when I generate the layout, the topic pages show duplicate breadcrumbs. I deleted them all, but when I generate the layout, they come back.
2) I have multiple custom .css files which appear to be auto-generating from my original somehow. I didn't create them, and neither did the app developer when he messed with the files. They have the same file name as my original .css, but with characters appended, like_ns and _ns_nc. I went through every topic and reapplied my original .css, but the weird styles keep coming back.

Appreciate any help or insight as to how to get rid of these problems. Thanks.

[Peter Grainge]

Welcome to the forum.

What your developer has done is edit the output files rather than the source files. Because of the version differences he would not have been able to edit the source files. I wonder if you gave him those anyway or just the output?

Regardless you are where you are. I do hope you have a backup of the project from before you copied the edited output files back into the source. It will be easier to start from there and have your developer advise the changes by some other means. Otherwise you have a bit of an unholy mess to sort out.

There is a way of cleaning up the output files if you really have to but given your experience level, you may not want to go there. If you have no choice, then Rick Stone's site has an excellent article on the matter and I can let you have the link later. Not to hand right now.

When you generate your output, RH, creates two versions of the CSS, one for IE, and one for Firefox, that is the ns one you are seeing.

Your source project CSS should be the only one you need.

[Peter Grainge]

BTW. Tell your developer you won't mess with his code if he doesn't mess with your help. :-)

[Guest]

Welcome to the community.

Red squares in your WYSIWYG editor suggests chunks of JavaScript. Click a red box and switch to the HTML view to see the scripts highlighted. If you're seeing duplicate breadcrumbs, it sounds like the developer generated an output and then you dropped or imported the HTML files back into your project. Deleting the red boxes/scripts in your WYSIWYG may fix the problem.

As far as I've been able to tell, RH creates the "ns" style sheets for Netscape or Mozilla-based browsers. Somehow, that style sheet automatically gets used in browsers like Firefox, but in my experience, RH doesn't always keep the two style sheets synched. I'm really not sure at what point the "ns" versions get created. I'm sure you could delete the extraneous style sheets, but you may find that they'll reappear at some point.

I hope this helps,

Ben

[Eng__Editor]

Ben and Peter: Thanks for your insights. Ben, yes, the red boxes are JavaScript pieces. I tried deleting them in the WYSIWYG editor, but the next time I generate the layout, they seem to reappear in the source files. I was hoping I wouldn't have to, but it sounds like I'll have to take your suggestion, Peter, and go back to my backup copy of the project and reconstruct from where the problems started. Sigh. Oh, well. Part of the learning process, I suppose.

[Peter Grainge]

At least you have learned the value of backups early on.

Maybe your developer can recall the topics he edited so that you can do some copy and paste from his topics.