Empty popups

[kvwmack]

I have a RoboHelp HTML project that I did last year in RoboHelp version 9.1; the popups in the compiled .chm file worked last year but do not work now, that is they pop up empty of any content, whether they should contain either graphics or plain text in them. What gives, is it something in the system (a fresh install of Windows XP) that is lacking or some other? Where the graphic popups are concerned, I have only three graphics in the Image folder, the rest are in the Baggage folder.

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi kvwmack and welcome to the RH forums. If you are saying that the RH project has not changed but the operating system has, the first thing I'd do is look at your IE security settings. Windows XP - particularly Service Pack 2 - and IE6 have set default options preventing various actions that are considered to be a security threat.

[kvwmack]

Thanks for the welcome and your response Colum. I did some searching here on the question and some of the suggestions in replies to similiar questions reminded me that it could be a setting in IE, etc. I've checked them all, security, activex, etc. but so far without success. I believe it must be a problem with the system and not the .chm as it did work the last time I opened it some time last year, although the popups do not work on my father's system either. I go for a job interview tomorrow so I can only hope that they work properly on another system.

[RoboColum_n_]

If you need the CHM as a work example for a job interview I'd do everything possible to make sure it works before you get there. Try using the method in this link as an attempt to fix it. Best of luck.

[Versifier146]

I'm not sure why the links would "suddenly" stop working -- it's possible that the links are merely broken and you need to highlight & re-link them. For example, I when I switched to HTML Help (.CHM) not too long ago, some of my popups did not work when I switched over. When I clicked them, I received the "this page cannot be displayed" error.

The link to the popup was still there, it just was not being read for whatever reason. What I did was I highlighted the link, right clicked, selected "Popup Properties", saw that the link was connected to the right screen, selected OK, tried the link again, and it worked.

~Jesssica

[Captiv8r]

Hi Jessica

Seems I answered a post very similar to this a while back. But I'm not seeing it in this thread, so here goes.

What RoboHelp version are you using? I ask, because long ago (version 9 I think) RoboHelp had an issue that suddenly manifested where popups were blank. As I recall, it happened because Microsoft introduced version 6 of the browser. The JavaScript code inside RoboHelp was blissfully unaware of this version, so it refused to display content in the popup it created. This required a patch from eHelp to update the JavaScripting.

Sooo, is it possible that your IT folks have been lagging seriously and just now implemented IE6? Or even remotely possible that you are still using an older version of RoboHelp?

Oh and I should also add the following for those that may be new to RoboHelp. How is it that I'm referring to an older version of RoboHelp and calling it version 9? Isn't 6 the latest?

The answer to this is that different companies have owned RoboHelp over the years. So I've seen versions 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 (also known as 2000), 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, 10 (also known as 2002), 11 (also known as X3), 12, (also known as X4), 13 (also known as X5), and now the Adobe branded version of "6" (which is logically version 14.

Just a thought... Rick

[kvwmack]

Thanks for all the replies; I'll try looking into the JavaScript idea on my system as other solutions mentioned have not resolved it. When I demonstrated the .chm file for my job interview the popups worked on the interviewing manager's machine. I was betting they would as I do believe something is still missing on my system since I reinstalled Windows XP.

[Peter Grainge]

Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling RoboHelp since you installed XP SP2?

[kvwmack]

I'm not certain another install of Robohelp would change anything; when I recently did a fresh install of Windows, I then installed SP2, and then installed Robohelp. I haven't had time to putts with it the last couple of days but tomorrow I'll take some time again to try figuring this thing out and post if I have any success.

[Peter Grainge]

Agreed it is unlikely if you did things in that order.