Preview Topic

[LEC1]

Hi there -
Why would the preview topic feature stop working in Robohelp 7 Html Help? Does anyone know?

Thanks

[RoboColum_n_]

Is this a problem for all projects? Try rebooting your PC. Is your project on a network drive? Move it to a hard drive.

[LEC1]

Hi there -
Yes it is for all projects. I did reboot my machine it did not work. It is on a network drive but it use to work in the past.

[RoboColum_n_]

You should NEVER have your source files on a network drive apart from backing up to one. RH uses an Access database as it's "engine" and these are prone to all sorts of problems when run over a network drive. Create a directory off your C drive (e.g. C:\RH Source) and move all your source files there.

[LEC1]

Ok. But there are multiple people who work on this project. How is that handled?

[RoboColum_n_]

You have two options which are not too different from what you are doing now.

Option one is to get the person who is working on a project to copy from the network location to their hard drive, make the changes and copy the source back to the network. Note it is perfectly OK to backup to a network drive. You will have to have some procedure in place so that two authors don't copy the same source and work on it at the same time.

Which brings me onto the second option. This is use a source control application. This allows you to control who is working on a project (or an individual file) by placing a lock on it thereby preventing anyone else modifying it until it has been checked in (unlocked). RH has its own source control application but most people use a third party solution.

[LEC1]

Thanks for the info. I will give it a shot. Have a good day!

[RoboWizard]

Hi LEC1

Did you ever resolve the issue with Previewing? I'm not seeing in this thread that it was addressed.

Cheers... Rick

[KC_in_Colorado]

I seem to be having the same problem with RoboHelp 7 HTML. Preview has suddenly stopped working. It pops up a window that "hangs" for a bit and then displays as an empty window.

My project is on my C drive. I'm the lone author. The project is under source control, and the source control server (VSS) is remote.

I work at home most of the time and haven't seen this before. Will see what happens after a reboot. But this sure looks like a "bug" to me.

kc

[Peter Grainge]

See Snippet 61 on my site.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

[KC_in_Colorado]

Thanks Peter, but the snippet did not apply to me. My Preview window was very visible -- just empty! :*)  The reboot last night seems to have corrected whatever the problem was. But I've seen it before, and only with RH 7.

kc

[Jared Hess]

This happens to me quite often. My preview window will display but with no content in it. Usually restarting the RH application fixes this (at least temporarily). I just wish I knew what caused it and how to fix it more permanently. I'm using the latest RH 7.

[KC_in_Colorado]

It seems to be related to closing leftover instances of the compiled Help before launching the latest. For example if I notice, while I'm compiling, that I have a few extraneous browser sessions open with earlier compilations, and I close them before clicking View Result in the dialog that appears when the compile is complete, I'm pretty much guaranteed to get an empty browser window.

Here's something you might want to try - still annoying but easier than rebooting RH7. From the empty browser window, browse to another site like www.adobe.com, and then click Back. That USUALLY (but not always) refreshes the Help and it displays as it should have when it was first launched. Other times, I just have to restart RH7.

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one experiencing this. Sure looks like a bug to me.