Custom Webhelp Skin a Problem in Firefox

[Tom_J_]

Custom webhelp skins created by RoboHelp 7 are problematic in Firefox.. The browser loads eternally, the Back and Forward buttons don't work. You can click around okay -- most of the time. Then when you do click the Back button, it takes you out of the browser back to the page before you entered the help (even though you've been navigating inside the help for a while). When you click the Forward button to re-enter help, the TOC pane is totally gone.

Additionally, bullets and sub-lists display incorrectly in Firefox. By sub-lists I mean a, b, c, d, etc., usually placed below a regular number. Look at them in IE versus Firefox -- totally different indentations. Same with bullets. When you create a style for bullets, it indents strange (doesn't indent the bullet, just the text).

I know there are a lot of css issues between Firefox and IE, but when the Back and Forward buttons are crippled and the bullets and sub-lists are scatter-brained, it's highly problematic.

I thought at first it was my manual adjustments to the css style sheet, so I reverted to the default and only adjusted styles through the standard RoboHelp editor. Same problems.

Am I safe to conclude that RoboHelp only works well in IE?

[Peter Grainge]

Take a look at the Browsers page on my site under Authoring.

It was written pre RH7 but it does cover some of the points you raise.

I'm not on the RH7 machine right now to check the Back button but isn't that to do with the fact that as the help in in frames, the address never changes so when you click Back, in the browser it goes back one address which is whatever was loaded before the help?

[Tom_J_]

I did read some previous threads on browser issues, but none seemed to have clear solutions to this problem. The back/forward functionality does work even in frames. IE works this way and so does (should) Firefox.

[Peter Grainge]

Just checked with IE and FF.

IE. Yes the back and forward buttons worked as you want.

FF. After opening the help, it doesn't build any history while the spinning button is shown on the tab. Hit Escape to kill that. Then navigate through some topics and it does cycle back through. The first time I got a result more like you describe but I haven't been able to repeat that. Also I found that I could not open a book until I opened the book containing the default topic and clicked another topic there.

Download the version of Customer Care on my site so that we are singing off the same hymn sheet. It contains some late changes. If you prefer to use what is installed, it shouldn't affect this issue.

http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/rh7/using_rh7.htm (See item 13)

[Tom_J_]

I see what you're talking about -- after the user presses the Escape key, the Back and Forward buttons start to build history.

But I'm obviously not going to put a little note each of my topics telling users with Firefox to click an Escape key. What would I have to change in the RH code to keep the browser from eternally loading (without requiring the user to press Escape)?

[Peter Grainge]

Such information as I have re fixes has been posted in the page I referred to, although I gave the wrong directions.

Look under http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/browsers/browsers.htm

Whether or not the solutions there will work for you depends on the server where the help will reside.

[Peter Grainge]

I see that also contains the fix to the problem I described of books not opening! Should visit my site more often.

[Tom_J_]

Thanks Peter. The solution posted on your site actually does work. For other readers having this problem, see the section "Help is slow to complete loading or it fails to complete loading" on this page: http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/browsers/browsers.htm

When I implemented this, Firefox fully loaded.

Re the problem of books not opening, I didn't experience this because I'd already implemented the solution you wrote about earlier (available on the same page).