MadCap Software Forums

Hi there,

i've just finished an iPhone help system and everything worked really well without much tweaking. hooray! that's the good news. The bad news is that users need an extra tap to get into it. imo, going straight into the TOC would be much better, from a usability perspective, than going into the nav menu for index, TOC, browse sequences etc - all of which i've turned off except Search and TOC.
Does anyone know if it's possible to get Flare to open the TOC as the startup topic in webhelp mobile? I have read about startup topics in the help but they apparently aren't supported in webhelp mobile.
Is there a post-output workaround that people are using, maybe redirecting from default.htm after all the scripts etc have run?

i would be grateful for any pointers.
thanks,
Owen

i tried doing a redirect from the default.htm to toc_0.htm which worked just dandy. don't know what else i broke in the process though, although i do know i don't have the search field anymore. i put the meta refresh type of redirect in just before the end of the head section. there is a lot of madcap generated javascript in the head that looks like it's deliberately setting the landing page, so i probably am courting danger. oh well. still looking forward to hearing if anyone else out there has a fix for this issue

cheers
owen

did you ever figure this out? i don't like it starting out on the TOC either?

a redirect worked as i posted above. i can't remember exactly the details, but essentially you tell the iphone browser to go to a different page than the one it loads when the help opens. i can't give you the source though as i stopped working at the place where i did that. good luck.
owen

Has anyone else come up with a solution?

Does this redirect also work on Android and Windows phones, or only on iPhones?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

it's pretty standard html practice, although sometimes security stuff doesn't like it, so i would say give it a try and see how you get on. i've not worked on mobile outputs in a while, but your devs should easily help you with the redirect

I agree that requiring users to tap the Table of Contents option to go directly into the real list of help topics adds an extra, unnecessary step. Presumably that homepage on the mobile webhelp shows a larger menu: Table of Contents, Index, Glossary, and About. However, the Index and About options aren't that helpful in my situation, so that leaves just the Table of Contents and Index. You can see my mobile webhelp here: https://ue.ldschurch.org/mobile/gla.

When users drill into the Table of Contents, that URL becomes https://ue.ldschurch.org/mobile/gla/Adv ... /Toc_0.htm. I could set URL as the default URL for help, but the problem is that the Home button in the skin always redirects to the view that has the Table of Contents and Index, not the direct list of topics.

Apart from hacking the output to change the URL to the home button (a tedious process if you regenerate your target frequently), I don't see any solution.

This blog post should help getting the TOC as a startup topic.

http://www.madcapsoftware.com/blog/2012 ... plication/

Hello Rob,

I followed that blog post and unless I missed something that process has to be done after every "Build Primary" correct? It seems when you run Build Primary it essentially reverts the coding I edited back to the original.

It's almost like you need to build primary first, then modify the coding, then send your final package for upload.

I just want to clarify. Thank you.

dkramp wrote:... unless I missed something that process has to be done after every "Build Primary" correct?

You did not miss anything. This procedure works great, but it is "post-processing." You have to do it after Flare does its magic. Every time you generate the target.

Is there a way to have a single topic as the first page? I want users to click through a series of steps - so each step is going to be a topic.

My goal is to have a specific topic open up first, then use the "PreviousTopic" and "NextTopic" toolbar buttons to have users click through the steps. I have the toolbar working.. but its still taking two clicks ( "TOC" and "Step 1" off of the TOC menu) before you get to that first step.

the meta refresh should work to direct user from default for any topic, not just loading the TOC. also, less work to put the refresh in the head of default after the build than to do the other hack (copying the contents of TOC 0 into default ul). you might even be able to put the refresh in before the build though i haven't tried it..

all this might be a waste of effort if you go for the full banana flare 10 responsive webhelp2, tho i haven't personally tried it.

the internet abounds with places to tell you how to do the redirect, eg. http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/H76

Put this in the <head> section of ...\Output\WebHelpMobile\Advanced\Default.htm and Save:
In Flare, click View Primary to verify it works. Then make a copy of the Default.htm file somewhere outside of the Output folder and copy over the Default.htm after each build. Here's a VBScript I use for this purpose: