Master pages in Robohelp 10

[Alison - Clearly Stated]

Hi,

Using Robohelp HTML 10, part of Tech Comms Suite 4 on Windows 7 Professional.

Before I spend any more time trying to get this to work, I need to know if I'm doing something fundamentally wrong (in the sense of trying to use Master Pages incorrectly), these are known bugs (possibly with workarounds) or there is likely to an issue with my installation of RoboHelp.

1. I created three master pages - 1 for my user topics, 1 for my admin topics and one for popups. When creating new topics from them, they work fine. (Header and footer information in place, default information in the body section). BUT when I apply the Admin master page to existing topics, the footer information is not copied across (it should contain basic copyright information).
2. Updates to master pages (in the footer and the header - I understand that the body is simply a placeholder) aren't copied across - I tried to incorporate some additional information in the footer, but it didn't apear.
3. I still get the "you've made changes to a footer that affects the masterpage" dialog even when I've been nowhere near it... sometimes selecting the "update this topic only option" removes the master page and I can simply reapply it. Sometimes it's still theoretically attached (the Properties of the topic show it as present and it's listed in the HTML) but the footer isn't present.
4. I tried putting an anchor of "top" in the header and a corresponding link "Back to top" in the footer, but when I tried to use that, I discovered the footer hadn't linked to "top" but to "../top", so it didn't work.

And one that I'm not sure is a master page issue...

1. CSS styles that I see in the Design view and in Preview aren't being carried across to the .CHM (I'm producing both CHM and webhelp for this project - I haven't tried the webhelp since the latest changes). I'm having to use inline styles... These are for the copyright statement in the footer.

Any pointers gratefully received. I'm starting to come to the conclusion that I can only use master pages for new topics.. 😞

Thanks in advance.

Alison

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Since I don’t really use Master Pages, I can’t directly help you, BUT, Rick (Capiv8r) had a great explanation out there on how MP’s work – I just can’t find it now.