browser support for RoboHelp 9 WebHelp / not working on IE7

[rlauriston]

Does Adobe have an official list of what browsers are compatible with RH9's WebHelp?

My output works fine on IE9, but in IE7 the TOC is blank and the search doesn't work.

[Peter Grainge]

IE7 should be fine. Are you perhaps viewing it locally and seeing a yellow information bar? If so, there is an option on the right of the yellow bar to view it.

The supported browsers for 9 are IE, FF and Chrome.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[rlauriston]

The help's not local and there's no information bar or any other indication that anything's wrong. The Search tab looks fine, it just doesn't work.

I called Adobe tech support and their RH9 output works on IE7, so I'll try their settings.

News to me, Microsoft now distributes free virtual PC images of IE 6, 7, 8, and 9 for compatibility testing:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=11575

Chrome does not work at all, TOC and page panes are both blank and search doesn't work, but I don't care about that since we don't support it anyway.

[Peter Grainge]

I'm not sure what it is in my reply that you are referring to when you say "News to me" or are you just passing on some information you have just found?

As with IE7, Chrome should also work with RoboHelp 9 generated output provided it is on a web server. Whilst you may not have to support Chrome, it does seem odd that browser is also not working.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[rlauriston]

Ah, I didn't test Chrome on a Web server, since we don't support it. It's just my default browser so I frequently open the WebHelp in it by mistake.

It's news to me that MS is providing canned VMs for compatibility testing.

[Peter Grainge]

OK. If what Adobe told you does fix the problem, please post it here to help.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[rlauriston]

Adobe's settings worked for IE8. Still working on getting an IE7 test instance.

[rlauriston]

Still not working with IE7 (TOC blank, Search looks OK but finds no results, default topic or CSH target topic loads OK), though it's fine with IE8, IE9, and Firefox.

I created a sample project in FrameMaker, imported it into RoboHelp, matched its WebHelp settings with the problem project, and it works fine.

Any suggestions on what other settings to look at that are messing up the output?

[rlauriston]

My bad, actually the sample project did not work with IE7 after I loaded it on the Web server (Tomcat), only when I loaded it locally.

I spent a while on the phone and screen-sharing with RoboHelp support, they said they'd investigate and call me back.

[Peter Grainge]

If it works locally in IE7 but not on the server, that surely suggests the server configuration.

See if Item 6 here helps. http://www.grainge.org/pages/snippets/snippets.htm#webhelp

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[rlauriston]

There's no general server-side issue since it works fine on IE8, IE9, and Firefox. Also, Chrome displays the help on the server fine, but never displays the local version. There could be some obscure IE6 issue specific to Tomcat, but I'll let Adobe sort that out.