RH 6 .chm compatibility w/ Vista

[ristra]

RH 6 cannot be installed successfully under Vista but everything I've read indicates the 6.0-generated .chm works...However, when viewing a RH 6.0-generated .chm (local not on server) under Vista, I receive the following error in the topic pane: "The address is not valid." Viewing the same file under XP works fine.

Anyone else experiencing problems viewing RH 6.0-generated .chm files under Vista?

Thx for any insight.

-robin

[Guest]

Hello ristra,

Welcome to the forum.

Check this Tech Note for details.

Hope this clears it up,

Brian

[ristra]

Thanks, Brian. As I indicated in my post, I'm aware that RH6 is not compatible w/ Vista. However, the application's incompatibility w/ Vista doesn't necessarily mean that the resulting files produced from RH6 under a different OS (e.g., XP) won't work under Vista. This is what I'm trying to get more info on: are RH6 generated .chm files (produced in my case in the XP environment) working for folks under Vista?

They're not working for me (topic pane doesn't resolve---see my original post for error msg). However, I saw a post from Peter Grainge stating that these .chm files should work under Vista. I'm just trying to get the real skinny.

Anyone?

[RoboWizard]

Hi ristra

If you would like, I'll be happy to test one of your .CHM files on my Vista install. To my knowledge, there is nothing unique and specific to .CHM files created using RoboHelp that would preclude displaying under Vista. I do know that if you are using one of the features that require the HHActiveX.DLL file (Browse Sequences, Glossary Tab or WebSearch) that the .DLL will need to be present and registered in order for those features to work properly. But all that would cause is for the Glossary tab to be blank or the Browse Sequence bar to simply not appear. I've never known this to cause the entire .CHM to fail to display.

Are you absolutely certain that the .CHM isn't on a LAN? Hmmm, in reading your initial post, I do see where it appears to display just fine under XP.

Also, how did you obtain the .CHM? If you downloaded it from a web site, maybe it's simply being blocked. Then again, I would think it would behave the same way regardless of the OS. Obviously something is amiss.

Wish I had something more or better to offer here.

Cheers... Rick

Cheers... Rick

[ristra]

Hi Rick,

Thanks for responding to my post. Unfortunately, I can't send you the .chm to test as it contains proprietary info not-yet-ready-for-primetime. But to answer your questions:

not using any features that require HHActiveX.DLL
.chm not on a LAN
obtained .chm by compiling my RH6 HTML Help project and tested locally under a Vista box

-robin

[RoboWizard]

Hi again

Does the same thing happen with a totally different .CHM file? What if you create a brand new one with only two or three topics? I might suggest trying that to see. If that fails, you could then send me the new one to test with.

Cheers... Rick

[ristra]

Will do! Was thinking of doing this but have just been heads down all day. Stay tuned, and thanks for your willingness to help me troubleshoot this issue...no one else seems to want to dive in.

-robin

[twriter01]

Although I have nothing to offer, I am interested in your test results, because we are planning to purchase v6. From what I gather in the posts, the CHM file should work on Vista, but you're not seeing these results. Please keep me posted. --Thank you, Ben (I would assume more users would report such a major issue, if it was truly an issue.)

[Captiv8r]

Hi twriter01 and welcome to our community

I received a .CHM file from Robin and it worked fine on my own Vista installation. This tells me that something is going on with the Vista configuration that is being used there and it's not generically an issue with RoboHelp created .CHM files on Vista. I'd be totally shocked and surprised if that turned out to be the case.

Cheers... Rick

[dbeebe]

Is there a solution to this dilemma?

My company is concerned that we won't have control over how our customers set up Vista, so access to the tech docs will be severely limited. (I'd say 95% of our docs are released as CHMs.) We have a possible customer on Vista who doesn't want CHMs because of the compatibility issues.

I've considered moving to RoboHelp Server and use WebHelp or FlashHelp, but then run across the people in my company who say that not everyone is going to have internet access to get to the docs and others who don't want anything to do with Flash-anything.

The other option is to generate the help as PDF, but I haven't been very thrilled with that output's appearance yet. (Could be user error since I haven't had time to perfect it yet!) It looks like I'll be pushed really hard in this direction.

I'd love to hear what others are doing out there.
Thanks,
Diana

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi Diana. Why would you want to have control over how your clients set up Vista in their configuration. CHMs do work under Vista so what are the specific "compatibility issues" your customer base have? Perhaps we can try and address those without telling clients how to set up their windows OS.

[dbeebe]

Hi, Colum,
I understand that we can't control what our customers are using, and I don't want to tell them how to setup up their OS. There is a misconception that CHMs don't work, so it is also an education issue.

One customer had trouble with CHMs on Vista. They were unable to control the end-user settings, and many of their corporate accounts mandated certain security settings limiting CHMs. In fact, yesterday they said that they don't want CHMs from us.

I'm looking for what other options might be available. Is anyone else using RoboHelp Server to get around this? Or is anyone doing something else creative that could be helpful? I'm trying to avoid the Printed Documentation output because I'm not thrilled with the way it looks.

Thanks,
Diana

[timstspry1]

Hello Rista, I am actually using RH5 on Windows Vista Business. I had no problems installing it. I do get an error message at times stating cannot load component 4, but clicking on the o.k. button gets rid of the error message and RoboHelp seems to work just fine. One downside is that I do have MS Office 2007 installed, so I cannot use MS Word 2007. I have chosen not to install MS Word for Office 2003 as I don't really want two versions of Word on my computer. I have generated Web Help and Flash Help on Vista, and it works just fine. With regard to .chm files, while I have not actually generated them in RH5 I have used them in the application that I support on Vista without problems.

I hope this helps!

Tim

[Guest]

I have X5 installed on my machine w/ Vista Home Basic. I'm having scripting errors with drop downs (Line 1; Char 1; Object expected) in my FlashHelp project... Its a new machine, and my first time with VIsta. Can anyone help?