Search Function Broken - see screen

[Tom.H]

Hi,

This seems a little unusual. The search tab and search functionality of my WebHelp system has suddenly broken.  It works correctly before it is put into the software build, but after it gets put into the build, it looks like this.  See the missing vertical line and the absence of a search box.  The items listed in the search tab are not topic titles, they seem to be a list of the order of search returns or some other mechanics of the WebHelp UI.

This seems to be a programmer problem (maybe a problem with the javascript files?), not a help author problem. Does anyone have any thoughts?

• It is browser independent (is broken on MSIE 6, Mozilla, Safari).

• This did not happen prior to the last two builds, but I can't be sure that I didn't change something when I generated the webhelp.

• If you can't read the address bar, the file name there is whnjs.htm, which is apparently the parent frameset file created by RoboHelp, not by me.

Thanks,

Tom

[Gravenstein]

Hi Tom -

This looks similar to what I get when my browser security settings are blocking my ActiveX controls. You might try checking in that area.

G

[jdcyclone1]

When getting ready to compile your help, on the 3rd WebHelp options screen, there is an option to choose either DHTML > Pure HTML, or Pure HTML....and I noticed that if I didn't choose DHTML then I received the same results. So try selecting DHTML and see if that fixes your issue.

Good luck!

[Tom.H]

Hi,

I just stumbled into this thread again and realized that I never followed up with the resolution.  The programmers messed around with some of the javascript files (I don't recall if I ever knew which ones), and basically made it so that some browsers were treated as the most basically-functional browsers.

The key to figuring this out is in looking at my screen capture (earlier post).  You can see that the file is called "whnjs.htm," which is not a file I created.  It's basically the go-to file for any browser that falls into the "other" category after the version checker fails to recognize it as one of the supported browers.  Even as a novice code-reader, I was able to read through the javascripting and see the logic (Is it IE6?... if no then is it IE5?... if no then is it Nav5?.... etc, until it just says .... ok if it's not any of these browsers, then go whnjs.htm, which is the butt-ugly barely usable HTML only version).

After numerous hours wasted I went back to the programmers, who basically fixed it on their end without explanation.  O well, at least I learned something and might as well pass it on to the community.

Regards,

Tom