TOC is Sometimes NOT Displayed

[Guest]

I'm working with RH 5/WebHelp & occassionally the TOC is not displayed. If the output (compiled Help project) is closed & re-opened, the TOC does appear. Does anyone know why this happens?

[HKabaker]

Sometimes, depending on network response time, the TOC takes a while to appear, also depending on how you generated WebHelp for the master project and child projects. How long do you wait for the TOC to appear before hitting the close button? If not "forever," try "forever."

When generating WebHelp, did you select the option to optimize for Web, or for Intranet? Was this choice consistent for all projects?

Harvey

[Guest]

Harvey,
I'm working with a single project. When the TOC does not appear I wait until I see "Done" at the lower left of the window before closing it.

Optimal speed was set for the Internet, but I changed this since the project is accessed through the Intranet. Should this change prevent this issue from happening again? If not, do you know if the issue is related to the browser or to RH?

I appreciate your response and guidance, thank you!

Eva

[HKabaker]

Eva,

You didn't say whether the change to optimize for Intranet resolved the problem.

When the status says "done," I think it means the topic is loaded, but the WebHelp TOC compiler may need a little more time. That's why I suggested waiting "forever."

Harvey

[Guest]

Hi Harvey,

It does not appear to be fixed. I opened the output & the TOC did not immediately load. 10 minutes have passed and still no TOC - I'll leave it open and see what happens.

What I don't understand is that I can open another instance of the output and the TOC appears immediately.

Eva

[HKabaker]

Assuming you have installed the X5.02 upgrade, all I can suggest is upgrading to RH 7.

Harvey
Assuming you have installed the X5.02 upgrade, all I can suggest is upgrading to RH 7.

Harvey

Come to think of it, Peter's site suggests some patches you could install, and which may help. Several of us contributed to those pieces, included in his topic on Browsers. Go to www.grainge.org

[Peter Grainge]

No TOC should take that long in any version and if it is only one project, I wouldn't like to suggest someone spends hundreds of dollars / pounds that might have no effect.

Have you / can you try publishing the help to a different server or to a different folder?

Have you tried deleting the whole output and publishing it afresh?

[Guest]

Peter,
I only have access to publish to one particular server. I can publish to another folder. So that I can understand what's happending, how can this potentially solve the issue?

Thank you,
Eva

[jdcyclone1]

Just a shot in the dark, but could this be an issue with having spaces in the project name? My issue dealt with FlashHelp Pro, so it's a completely different layout...but my TOC definitely disappeared on a regular basis. I was told to remove all spaces from the project name, and ever since my TOC has worked perfectly for every project. Just thought I'd throw that out there. Not saying this is your solution, but something to ponder none-the-less.

[HKabaker]

jd reminds me of this, too:

Spaces and special characters in flenames are anathema to many Web applications, not just RH. Hyphen - and underscore _ are fine.

Of course, the TOC label and topic title can have spaces; best to avoid special characters in the topic title; the TOC label doesn't have to match the topic title.

HTH.

Harvey

[Guest]

JD & Harvey,
I will keep those points in mind when I create projects in the future, but this particular project's title is a single word with no special characters.

Eva

[HKabaker]

Eva,

I also was referring to topic filenames, but on rereading my post, I see it didn't specifically say that. Sorry for the obtuseness.

Harvey

[Peter Grainge]

Eva

You posted

****************************************
I only have access to publish to one particular server. I can publish to another folder. So that I can understand what's happending, how can this potentially solve the issue?
****************************************

My thinking was that maybe a file had got corrupted and that would be the quickest way to check it.

Also does this occur with all browsers or just one?