Navigation in Toolbar does not work after viewing unreferenced topic

[ChickAD]

I've googled for this WebHelp issue but cannot see it despite suspecting it to be a common author's requirement. The issue affects RH7 and 9 standalone/unmerged WebHelp projects.

I have a number of simple procedures that are common to many topics in the TOC; to avoid duplication and reduce maintenance, I have set these up as topics that are not included/referenced in the TOC but are called from hyperlinked text in each topic where required.

The problem, I'm experiencing is that as soon as the user clicks through to one of the "unreferenced" topics, the navigation pane disappears; clicking on Contents, Index or Search on the toolbar has no effect. I can understand the logic of the TOC not opening: as it cannot sync -- but I don't understand why Search and Index cease to work.

Clicking the browser's back button will refresh the previous page and restore the Navigation pane and the operation of the buttons on the toolbar; however, if instead the user follows a textual link from the unreferenced topic to another topic, even one that is in the TOC, the Navigation pane remains hidden and toolbar buttons inactive. Even clicking on a referenced topic in the breadcrumb trail will not refresh the helpset but displays it with the navigation pane closed.

Can anyone help or tell me my simple error?

Regards,

Charles Addison

[Peter Grainge]

So the user clicks a link in the TOC, the contents of the topic pane change to required topic and then the nav pane disappears leaving just the toolbar for the tabs, is that right?

Where is the webhelp when you do this, on a server or local and what browser are you using?

Please use the camera icon to add a screenshot.

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@petergrainge

[ChickAD]

Hi Peter,

I'm using IE8 to view the help as this is our target but I've also tested with Firefox 3.6.8. The behaviour remains the same in all cases.

In addition I have tested the same System Administrator help module:

• while resident on my C:\
• while resident on a shared networked drive (inside and outside of my network domain); and
• while hosted on a SharePoint server.

I spotted this problem while testing our upgrade from RH7 to RH9 but I've since tested earlier versions of the deliverables and found that the problem was there when we were using RH7; we simply missed it .

Here is the help prior to clicking on the hyperlinked text to the unreferenced-topic:

Here is the target topic with the navigation pane collapsed and clicking the index button to demonstrate that nothing happens:

On clicking "Home" in the breadcrumb trail (top right of prev. topic), the topic is displayed but the helpset does not refresh nor is there a "Show" link to open the pane, as one gets when directly opening the Home page by double-clicking:

Any help appreciated.

Regards,

Charles

[Peter Grainge]

Can you set this up in a new test project? If you can I will take a look but I will not be around after today until next week so PDQ please.

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@petergrainge

[ChickAD]

Hi Peter,

well wouldn't you know! I built a test project with 4 topics in it and using our WebHelp skin, topic templates and CSS and... it works perfectly! The Navigation pane is displayed even when viewing the unreferenced topic and I can't make it misbehave. So not much point sending it on to you especially when you're in a rush.

I think I need to take some more time to do some investigation and compare the two projects to figure why the old one is "broke" and the new one "aint". One point is that these are VERY old project files that have been upgraded from RH5 to 7 to 9; could this be a code issue?

thanks again,

Charles

[Peter Grainge]

I have to confess I half expected that. I haven't seen anyone else report that problem but it could be from one of the upgrades.

First try using Tools > Options > Convert to HTML.

After that you need to look at the link properties.

Let us know what you find.

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@petergrainge

[ChickAD]

Firstly, thanks to Peter for getting back to me so quickly and pointing me in a fruiful direction.

The problem was indeed the link properties. I imported examples of the original topics into the clean test project and sure enough they remained buggy. I then compared the HTML. At some point over the years the hyperlinks have been inflated with machine generated rubbish. For example:

The link <a href="backupdatabase.htm">LabCentre Database Backup</a>

has become

<a href="backupdatabase.htm" title="LabCentre Database Backup" target="_parent" onmouseover="if ((parseInt(navigator.appVersion) == 4) && (navigator.appName == 'Netscape')) ehlp_showtip(this,event,'LabCentre Database Backup');" onmouseout="if ((parseInt(navigator.appVersion) == 4) && (navigator.appName == 'Netscape')) ehlp_hidetip();">LabCentre Database Backup</a>

Reverting it to the original code fixes the behaviour of the navigation pane.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to avoid spending the rest of my working life doing this by hand.

[Peter Grainge]

That is because somewhere along the line, someone has imported an output file into the project. That code is only found in generated help.

It looks like a job for Regular Expressions. See if your developers can help you on that and do make a backup first or you may end up with even bigger problems.

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@petergrainge

[ChickAD]

Hi Peter,

Actually, I've realised that it is the simple inclusion of the attribute target="_parent" in the hyperlink that causes RoboHelp to add all that code to output file.

I can now switch the behaviour on or off by inserting or removing the attribute in the source file.

I'm not sure why the attribute was there in the first place (I inherited these files) but it should be far easier to find and replace.

Thanks very much for your support,

Charles Addison