IE error message when searching WebHelp

[BobtheSpoon]

When searching WebHelp the following IE error message has appeared:

"A script on this page is causing Internet Explorer to run slowly. If it continues to run, your computer may become unresponsive.

Do you want to abort the script?"

The error seems to appear when certain frequently occurring keywords are searched for. The project is very large, over 10,000 html pages.

I've searched MSDN, and found an article which suggests changing the script timeout value on client machines by modifying a registry entry. But that's not a suitable solution for customers, I'd like to prevent the error message from appearing at all.
Thanks

[Peter Grainge]

10,000 topics should not cause a problem. In the third page of the wizard to generate the help, what setting do you have for Optimise Speed? Try Local.

[Captiv8r]

Hi all

In addition to fellow Adobe Community Expert Peter's fine words, it's not unheard of for a well formed Index to totally eliminate any need for failing over and using the last resort of Full Text Search.

Just a thought... Rick

[BobtheSpoon]

Thanks Peter and Rick for the suggestions.

I'm regenerating WebHelp with the Local setting selected, so I'll see how that goes, and will let you know.

Rick, it would be great if I could suggest to our Test dept that they use the Index instead of the Search! But unfortunately all the Help functionality needs to be working correctly ;~)

[BobtheSpoon]

Unfortunately optimising the speed for local didn't do the job, the error is still appearing.

I don't know if it's significant but the IE error seems to appear when searching for more than one word, for example: "Access Control" or "Operation Context". However, if you search separately for "Access" or "Control", the error does appear.

Would appreciate any more suggestions!

Thanks

[BobtheSpoon]

Oops, typo:

However, if you search separately for "Access" or "Control", the error doesn't appear!

[Peter Grainge]

I just fed a two word search using a term that I knew would get a lot of topics across a 12,000 topic merge. It's slow but it does not trigger the error and it does return a result.

Is it the same if you generate the webhelp to your hard disk?

Sorry but I don't know what else to suggest.

[BobtheSpoon]

Hi Peter,
There's no difference in the result. Thanks for your suggestions, I'll keep digging around for more ideas.

Regards.

[HKabaker]

Bob,

This is a limitation in the search engine. It's a dynosaur, requiring Boolean phrases.

Sometimes you can get away with the search term
Access Control

and get the correct results in a smaller WebHelp package. But it's likely you will also see topics that have both words anywhere in the text.

The proper terms is

Access AND Control.

(AND is upper case for emphasis here. Lower case connectors work fine.)

The search engine is fairly sophiticated, by the standards of its day. For example, you can use a search term like these:

Example A.
access AND (control or management)
This returns topics with both access and control, or access and management, or all three, but not just one of the words.

Example B.
access AND (control or management) NOT system
returns the same topics as in example A above, but omits any with the word system.

I haven't pushed the envelope here.
I'm pretty sure you can use nested terms like this:

access AND (control AND (setup or system))

To yield topics with
access and control + setup
access and control + system


but not just
access + setup
access + system
control + setup
control + system
access + control


I have seen comments that you can use terms like w/3 (within three consecutive words), so

Example C.
access w/3 control
yields words with the phrase access control or access management control.

By the way, reading your post, I wasn't sure whether you used "abcdef " above just for clarificatiion here, or in the search string as well.

I'm not sure
"acess control"
with the quotes will work efficiently to search WebHelp output.

WebHelp Pro is another matter. I've never used it.

RH's own on-line help covers this under "Advanced searching techniques."

As I mentioned in this forum a while back, after producing my first one or two projects, I adapted RH's topics to create a TOC book, "How to use these files," with topics on simple and advanced searching, using the Index, and printing. (Did you ever hear, "How can I print everything at once?"?) I use it in every RH WebHelp package, revising as needed depending on which features are present.

Harvey

Rereading the RH on-line help topic, I'm reminded that you can use

access NEAR control.

I haven't tested how many words in between are too many for NEAR.

And you can nest Booleans five deep. (Don't ask me how, ask a developer.)

H