Open WebHelp with specific topic displayed in Content pane using Firefox?

[PalantirTech]

Has anyone been successful using Firefox to open WebHelp with a specific topic displayed in the Content pane? This is our method of implementing context-sensitive help in the two weeks remaining before our product ships.

The information on Peter Grainge's site about how to do this ( http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/calling_webhelp/using_urls.htm) by specifying the start page and the topic's HTML file name in the Browser's address bar seems to work fine with Internet Explorer but not with Firefox:

X:/helpfolder/startpage.htm#path/target_topic_1.htm

Has anyone gotten this to work with Firefox?

Thanks!

[Captiv8r]

Welcome to our community, PalantirTech

I have a web site at http://www.RoboWizard.com that is presented using WebHelp. I open it all the time in this manner and Firefox is my default browser. So it seems to work. At least it does for me.

Cheers... Rick

[PalantirTech]

Hello Rick,

Thanks for your prompt response! The problem I have is that Firefox displays the "target" topic for a split second, and then jumps to the "parent" topic. To display the target topic, a user would have to click the Back button.

Since my original posting, I have discovered another thread ("Firefox Does Not Display Topics When Using "#" in the URL") in which it is suggested that: a) The problem might be due to having selected the "Book with Link" option in the TOC for the book that contains the target topic (and in fact for all the books in my help system; neat trick I learned in your SF RoboHelp class!); and b) that a workaround might be to edit whtbar.js or whtopic.js. The last posting in this thread is dated 03/22/2007, however, so I still am hoping for a better solution!

Thanks again, Kevin "Palantir Tech" Rothwell

[Captiv8r]

Well hey there, Kevin!

So you are now known as PalantirTech. I'll have to note that.

Yeah, hacking the JS may be your best bet for now. I'd definitely want to report the misbehavior to the Adobe folks at the link below:

Click here

Cheers... Rick

[PalantirTech]

Howdy Rick.

When I opened a case on this behavior (#0180292624), Adobe Tech Support rejected it, saying:

"I understand that you want to open up a specific WebHelp Topic on a content pane and you are using the .html file to do this process.

"That is possible to do so but unfortunately it is not supported on our
end. Custom coding and design issues are not covered by the Technical Support Department team."

Sigh. You presumably have a lot more sway than I do with Adobe Tech Support. Want to open a case under your own ID (he asked hopefully!)?

Miss your smilin' face, man!

Kevin

[ylee123]

We are also having this issue.

We're using Robohelp 7.02.001.

If we have content as so:

<book>
<topic>

When we bring up a link to nested content in firefox 2 using a URL like this:

http://server/index.htm?#Topic.htm

Robohelp shows the link for a second, then goes to the higher level category (e.g., Book.htm).

This works fine in IE.


Any help?