MadCap Software Forums

I know you posted this some time ago, and don't know if you've found any resolution. I wish I had an answer for you, but alas, I can only say I've experienced this when we've had source control issues, and had to re-import a project. But there seems to be nothing consistent about the problem. It see...

Turns out it was the <a> link after all. It just wasn't showing up in my build yet. Apparently a refresh issue. I'm pretty sure I don't like not being able to set those properties separately for drop-down hotspots and xrefs, though. Anybody have a suggestion for that?

Just upgraded to Flare 10, and find that somewhere, the default color for a drop-down hotspot that has been clicked on is set to that obnoxious bright blue. Not sure why that would have been a default setting, since bright blue isn't even the standard for any kind of <a> link that has been clicked, ...

Just wanted to say thanks for all your thoughtful replies, many of which were very helpful to my concerns. I get that you need to know your audience, first and foremost. And, of course, there is a big difference in approach, depending on whether you're talking about a procedure or CSH topic, and I m...

This is really more of tech writing question than a Flare question, but I'm interested in knowing what other writers think about this issue. I work with a team that consists of one other (less experienced) writer, two product analysts, and a project manager, none of whom have any tech writing experi...

Hmmm. I'm using Flare 9, in IE 10. When I mouse over a drop-down heading there's a text box that says, "Drop down" (I still can't believe it's not hyphenated!) A post on LinkedIn suggested the mc-image-alt-text property, but that is not correct.

Corrupted TOC in Flare? Can you just rebuild it?

There are any number of problems with the html 5 search behavior with Flare 9. Don't know yet if they've been addressed with 10. Quotation marks (a standard functionality in most search engines), does not yield desired results. Flare actually searches for the text string with the quotation marks, so...

Like just about every project out there, I've got loads of drop-down sections. I just noticed that in my output there is a flyover text box (duh, how is it I never noticed them before?). The default content is “Drop Down”. I don't want to instruct my readers to get down on the floor, so at the v...

Whether the best solution or not, I'm comparing the topic in Flare to the output on my staging server. The excluded xrefs are in plain text, and relatively easy to identify.

This is s common error message in a Flare build report. Most of the time there's a good reason for it, but it's an error message that the build report doesn't do a thing to help you resolve, or even locate. I'm currently looking at one that's identified as being part of a training guide topic that h...

Here's my two cents. Ultimately, for me, the difference is simply (as described in Flare's help topic) whether the snippet stands alone (in its own paragraph, etc.) or whether it is a short phrase that appears in line with other text. And, as Nita says, what Flare defaults to depends entirely on whe...

Thanks Nita. I do something similar with my file names, only we add the designator (Workflow, CSH, etc.) as a suffix to the file name. And I'm okay putting everything in the TOC. I'm curious as to how you modify topic titles to distinguish between, say, a workflow and a CSH topic on the same dialog ...

We are a relatively young software company, and are just now starting to develop CSH topics for various dialog boxes. Just curious what others are doing with regard to: One: Naming conventions. This has come up a couple of times. We have a workflow topic A and it happens that we want to create a CSH...

Once again, thanks Nita!

@Nita, Thanks so much for the guidance. I was doing most of what you described, with two, apparently, critical differences. I was not closing Flare (or at the very least the project) when trying to perform the merge, and I had put the working copies of both the trunk and the branch in the same Explo...

I confess to being completely confused by the SVN branching/tagging feature. We have been using SVN with the Tortoise interface, for about a year now, and are just coming to the point of needing to branch off for a version release. We were about to make the switch to TFS, because it's branching stru...

I've just been trying to work with embedding movies in my html5 output, and don't find the way Flare handles the output particularly appealing. First, the steps you have to take, and the results, will vary depending on what version of Flare you're using, and what your output is, so without knowing t...

I don't know if you've solved your error problems, or if this is related, but I kept getting similar error messages, including some that indicated a memory failure. After getting a completely new setup with more memory, disc space, and the works, I still got those error messages. After contacting te...

I wonder if you've gotten resolution to this issue yet. In theory, you should be able to open the properties window of any object, click the Audio tab, and add a sound file, or make a new recording right there.

I'm not sure how you could get any playback without a sound card. And I think it's pretty rare to find a computer without one these days...

I don't know if anyone who has posted here has found out any new information, but I've just started working in Mimic, and I was told by tech support that the capability to include quizzes was readily available in Mimic... I haven't started buidling my first project yet, so this is just hearsay, but ...

Thanks a bazillion! That answers most of my questions. Yes, we do have a source control system in place, so luckly, I won't need to run. I think we may set my source control separately because the development team is in a remote location and on different servers than customer support (but that's bas...

These are some basic questions, but it's the first time I've been solely in charge of a project. I am, essentially, the tech writing department. I am building a brand new help system for an existing software product. There is an extensive collection of KB articles that have been written by non-write...

Perfect! Thanks so much. We haven't actually installed (or even ordered) Flare yet. I've used it before, and have recommended it to the managers at my new position, where no help system exists, and there are no authoring tools. I guess I can assume that DotNet incorporates the WebHelp feature that a...