HTML5 index response slow

[BedfordWriter]

I'm finding that, for HTML5 output, the index takes a while to catch up to what I'm typing. I like the way that it works, doing more of a search than just a straight-up match-the-word index, but it can take 10 seconds or more sometimes to respond, especially when looking for multiple words, one after another.

I'm running this on a fairly average computer. Some customers will have faster machines, many will have slower. The index is currently a bit over 2600 words and counting, and that's my problem right there. But, deleting words isn't an option for me, and neither is asking the customers to buy faster computers. Is there any other way to speed up the index response time?

[AbbyMats]

We are also experiencing this, though Flare 11.0.1 Release Notes said it was addressed. If it was addressed, it is still a big issue with IE. Does anyone have tips on how we can improve this for IE.? A target setting we can tweak?

[BedfordWriter]

No longer an issue over here: We switched to the TopNav format. The index is now just a page.

[AbbyMats]

Unfortunately, we are not at a point to be able switch to TopNav skin yet and need to continue with HTML5 output. We need to find a solution for that.

We thought the problem was only with Internet Explorer 11, but some customers have also reported this behavior with Firefox and Chrome. We experimented with various “Chunk Large Index Files” settings in the HTML5 target, including disabling the option, enabling the option with a low value (10,000), and enabling the option with a high value (100,000). Nothing seems to fix the issue. Has anyone else seen this behavior?

[AbbyMats]

I wanted to post the solution to this in case anyone else out there is like us, still using HTML5 tripane and wondering why the Index search is problematic.

It occurred to me that when I use the general Search feature I type the search word/letters, then press Enter to launch the search; however, when I use the Index search it automatically starts to search on the letter combinations as I type them. For example, if I search for "routine," it immediately starts looking for everything that starts with "r," then "ro," then "rou," etc as I try to type. That's a lot of searching up front, especially in a large help system with many topics on routines. It seemingly freezes. Given that, I looked for topics on how to disable "type ahead" search in the Index. For the general Search feature, there's an easy-to-find parameter to disable it, but there was nothing as obvious for the Index search. I finally came across a topic about it for HTML tripane and the nitty-gritty is this:

• Enable/disable partial word search for the SEARCH feature in the TARGET Performance tab (OFF by default)
• Enable/disable partial word search for the INDEX search feature in the SKIN General tab (ON by default)

Once I disabled the setting in the skin, the performance of the Index search was much better and it didn't freeze mid-typing. I'm not sure why both parameters aren't using OFF as the default or why the index parameter is in the skin when other index parameters are in the target, but I'm happy to finally know how to disable it.