Greetings!
I hope that this has not been posted before anywhere in these forums, if it has, my apologies.
We are currently using RoboHelp 8, but the behavior seems to be identical in 9.
I was curious if anyone else has noticed this, whether it has caused any issues for your users and have you come up with any workarounds.
Here are the details:
Lets say that we have a Project in RooboHelp which consists of multiple folders, each with multiple topics.
Project: Test Project 1
Quick Reference Index - Yes (exists)
Policy (Folder):
- Policy Topic 1
- Policy Topic 2
- Policy Topic 3
Procedures (Folder):
- Procedures Topic 1
- Procedures Topic 2
- Procedures Topic 3
Just for this example, lets say that we have a user that is looking at "Policy Topic 3". They are done reading it and now want to go to "Policy Topic 2", using the breadcrumbs.
The breadcrumbs would look like this Home -> Policy -> Policy Topic 3
By instinct, the user clicks on "Policy", hoping that they will see a list of all the topics within Policy and they can quickly navigate to "Policy Topic 2". Unfortunately, each time they press on "Policy", the tool takes them automatically to the 1st topic under Policy, i.e. "Policy Topic 1".
In general, there seems to be a very logical explanation for this behavior, since the tool is designed in such a way that when a user clicks on any of the folders ("Policy" in this case), there's nothing to be displayed.
As you can imagine, this jumping from topic to topic can lead to some confusion and frustration for the end users, to the point where we have disabled it for most of our documents, thus focusing the users to use to search, use the table of contents or the Index.
Has anyone else noticed this and have you been to find a way to make the breadcrumbs' behaviour more accurate?
Thank you in advance 
7
Replies
Hi there
It's worth noting that there are two types of breadcrumbs that exist.
- Hierarchial
- Historical
In this case RoboHelp uses the former, not the latter.
Yours is the first report that I recall seeing where folks are complaining of this specific issue. It doesn't mean others don't have it or haven't noticed it, just that yours is the first I've seen here in the forums.
Basically all I can do is tell you that it is what it is. And if what it is isn't working for you, you are probably better off not using the feature. You might also consider submitting a Wish Form to ask Adobe to consider changing the behavior or providing more options that allow us to choose the behavior we want. You do this using the Wish Form and the link to it is in my sig lines.
Cheers... Rick
| Helpful and Handy Links RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7, 8 or 9 within the day! |
Hello again
Can I please ask for a bit of clarification?
What exactly do you mean when you say: Quick Reference Index?
Is this a pet term used by your own organization? For example, in my former life where I worked in the corporate world and developed help, my own system was called "Power Tools". Inside was an Index and there were several "Quick Reference" topics that we made available. But I'm a bit lost by your reference to "Quick Reference Index".
Thanks... Rick
| Helpful and Handy Links RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7, 8 or 9 within the day! |
This is a great question Rick. I just realized that I did mix up my examples with some of the internal naming convention that we use and I learned a few new things in the process. I took over in the middle of the project when things were already set up and i'm having to reverse engineer some of the things and discover why they were done certain ways.
The "Quick Reference Index" I was referring to appears to be something we have developed internally (just realized that). It's simply a Topic under "Project Files" which contains a list of all of our topics and links to them.
This of course brings the question as to where in the tool we control what "Home" links to within the Breadcrumbs? I went through the Breadcrumbs properties under "Single Source Laysouts" as well as the "Master Pages" (under Project Set-up), alas I couldn't find where the link has been definied. Does anyone have any idea?
I know I went a little off-topic here, for which I apologize. I will share any new findings I run into.
Thank you Rick
LOL, no apologies needed. 
Actually, the Home link points to the topic defined as the Default in the Single Source Layout recipe.
Click image below for larger and clearer view.
Cheers... Rick
| Helpful and Handy Links RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7, 8 or 9 within the day! |
AdChoices