Left TOC pane gone in WebHelp in product but there when I generate help in RH

[Guest]

Hello,

I have a help project setup as WebHelp. It is, for lack of a bettter word, embedded in one of our products. A Help tab brings up the project with default.html opens when the user clicks Help. I usually chane the name of the topic title Welcome to.....

When I generate/compile within RoboHelp, the left pane with the Index looks fine (after allowing blocked content). Of course, it opens in a browser.

However, a co-worker in QA noticed that when it opens in the product, the index does not show. The entire WebHelp folder goes in the project (unlike all of my other help projects, which use a .chm that is the lone file pulled by Development).

It should look very similar to the following screenshot. (Don't worry about the product version)

Recently I adjusted the font size of the Contents, Index, search items in the left pane by using the WebHelp Skin Editor (Previously, I added a Search option as well for this new (4.2) version of the product. I opened the .hhk file but made no changes. But I don't see how any of that would affect the pane actually appearing or not.

If anyone has any ideas on how tyo get the pane back, I'd really appreciate it. We're having a releasable build soon, and I need to remedy this. Thanks very much.

Kevin

[RoboColum_n_]

This maybe caused by the application calling the incorrect file. It should be called the file specified in the "Select Output Folder and Start Page" field in your single source layout.

---

The RoboColum(n)

@robocolumn

Colum McAndrew

[Willam_van_Weelden]

Hi,

I agree with Colum. If you do need to open your topics based on the location in the application, your developers need to create a context sensitive help call. See the following on Peter's site http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/calling_webhelp/calling_webhelp.htm for more information.

Greet,

Willam

[Guest]

Thank you both very much. Unfortunately, it didn't work. This product is the only one I use in RH as WebHelp. Our builder application defaults the help to call default.html.

I did a comparison of the previous version 4.1 that worked without incident. The only thing Dev pulls is the contents of the WebHelp folder. That is what gets checked in our SVN content management system. In comparing 4.1 and 4.2 I noticed a couple things. One of which is that there is no topic in the project called default.html; it's in the WebHelp folder only. Here's a better way to show the folders that may quickly signal an issue to you.

Here's the project folder for my 4.1 version that has worked fine. Notice no default.html file in there.

The file is, however, in the WebHelp folder ... but so are default.csh.html and default rhc.html files. No sure about these.

Here is how my new 4.2 version's project folder looks. Same as with 4.1, I have no topic called default.html.

In 4.2's WebHelp folder, default.html is also there. However, notice there is also a default_ns.css file, which wasn't there previously. Could that be causing a problem?

Sorry for all of the questions and pictures. This help has always looked great when I've been compiling 4.2 help when I unit test its links. The index is always there. This issue is baffling me. Thanks again.

Kevin

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi Kevin.

No problem with the pictures but they don't answer our question about the start page specified in the single source layout. If this is not default.htm then the application is calling the incorrect file. Can you confirm what the start page is set to? That is the file the application needs to call, not default.htm unless the start page is default.htm of course.

---

The RoboColum(n)

@robocolumn

Colum McAndrew

[Willam_van_Weelden]

Hi,

You project source will not have the default.htm as that is created on generation. As are the default_csh.htm and default_rhc.htm and the _ns.css. These files are expected. (The _ns.css only for RH7 and lower.)

Are you sure your developers are using the output from the !SSL! folder and not your project source? Can you post the URL your developers are using for opening the help? I may be able to see something in the URL.

Greet,

Willam

[Willam_van_Weelden]

I'll leave this to you Column. No use for double replies.

Greet,

Willam

[Guest]

Colum and William,

I started thinking about page/path being called per your suggestions. So, before I generated, I checked the Select Output Folder and Start Page setting. It was not pointing to WebHelp\Default.html file. It was going to the same file I have as the default topic, Welcome To.... So, I changed it in the Select OutPut Folder and Start Page path, generated it, and saved. I gave QA the revised WebHelp folder, they dropped it in the product, and it works fine now.

I guess the bottom line is that I forgot to change the end of the path when I created the project and never went back to do it any time I generated help. I had done so for versions 4.0 and 4.1, but not yet for version 4.2 of our product. Although it's my only WebHelp project as compared to over 25 HTML help projects, I have no excuse. Thank you both very much for your input. You were both at the root (no pun intended) of the problem.

Kevin 

[Guest]

Thanks to Colum and William, the path and source file suggestions did teh trick. Thanks.