Equations display badly in IE

[mnicoll]

I am using Robohelp X5 for Word. The Word documents contain equations. After generating the webhelp files, the equations display very badly in Internet Explorer. But they display just fine in Opera. If I open the actual gif file in IE,
it opens the Windows picture viewer, and displays the equation just fine (but quite large). So I would guess that the IE gif-shrinking algorithm is the culprit.
Anyone else come across this? Any suggestions?

[Captiv8r]

Hi mnicoll

Are these images larger than what will comfortably fit in IE? I ask because I'm aware that IE typically will automatically scale an image to fit within the window. If you hover the image, you see a couple of odd icons. I belive one of them appears in the lower right corner of the image and you have to click it to see the image at its full size. I believe you get at this setting by clicking Tools > Internet Options... > Advanced tab > Multimedia section. There, you should see a check box labeled "Enable Automatic Image Resizing". DE-select that and you should be set.

However, this would only change the behavior for your PC. There is nothing I'm aware of that you can do to accommodate your end users' PCs. Well, nothing to force a change in their browser behavior.

What you *CAN* do is to ensure your images aren't overly large to begin with. But that's a whole other nest of weiner dogs.

Cheers... Rick

[mnicoll]

Thanks for the reply, Rick.
I tried it with "auto image resizing" disabled in IE, but it made no difference.
I don't believe I have any control over the size of the images: MS-Word's equation editor must create the image internal to Word, then Robohelp for Word must extract it from the word rtf file and store it in the gif file.
Ah well, I'll keep experimenting.
... Matthew

[RoboWizard]

Hi again Matthew

Silly question here. You, umm, DID close and re-open the browser after making the change, no? I think that's a critical step.

Cheers... Rick

[frma]

Hi mnicoll
I see the same thing - the equations are not resized, but the quality is so bad they are unreadable.
I think the only safe way to get equations into browser-independent webhelp is to treat the equations as images. Taking a screenshot from the Word document is easiest.

[mnicoll]

Thanks frma - miser loves company.
Rick: yes I opened and closed IE numerous times with various "advanced" multi-media options set!

RoboHelp for Word already extracts the equations as images, and generates HTML which loads the images back in.
If I can't figure out a way around this, I may post again in the Robohelp for Word forum

[frma]

Yes, you're right that Robohelp extracts the equations as images but it does a lousy job of it. They seem to be extracted as extra-large GIF images that are then resized in the help file, and it is the resizing that messes up the quality. If you take a screen dump (as BMP, not GIF) and add it to your Robohelp for Word document using Insert Help Image (which oddly cannot handle GIF files), the inserted image is extracted as GIF to the SSL\Webhelp\images folder at the correct size, and the quality in the help file is the same as the quality in the screendump.
When I did this with a fairly simple small equation, the GIF file extracted from the Microsoft Equation version was 2528x864 pixels (yes, the width of 2 high resolution screes), while the GIF file created from the corresponding screen dump was 112x39 pixels. Don't as me why - but the GIF extracted from the original equation does have excellent definition at its actual size !