TOC open book icon missing in app-generated IE window

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KCinColorado
Propeller Head
Posts: 40
Joined: Tue Mar 20, 2012 11:00 am

TOC open book icon missing in app-generated IE window

Post by KCinColorado »

This is a strange one. I have an HTML5 project that gets bundled into our Windows application. When the user launches it from within the app, it displays in an IE window that our app opens. (It's customized to have no menus, buttons, status line, etc.) We've been using the same app and Help for several years.

The open book icon in the TOC no longer appears after the user clicks the book. There's just empty space there. (A second click restores the closed book icon.) This has never happened before. I have not changed the skin in years but HAVE upgraded to Flare 11. And modified some styles here and there (in a shared stylesheet).

Did something change in Flare 11 that would cause this? The PNG file for the open book is in the Skin folders as always, and also in my project Images folder (I use it in a Help topic). Engineering is asking if perhaps something changed in the Flare code and they need to modify a property of the browser window that their code opens. (Apparently there are a LOT of properties that can be set, and this thing was originally set up several years ago.)

If I view my Help interactively in IE (by browsing to the main file or from Flare after building the project), both book icons work fine! It's only when they are viewed in the app-generated IE window that the open book icon doesn't appear.

Any advice appreciated!
Nita Beck
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Location: Pittsford, NY

Re: TOC open book icon missing in app-generated IE window

Post by Nita Beck »

I've developed a similar Help system that's installed locally with a Windows app, and we sometimes also see weirdnesses like this (and like the Back button issue you reported in another post). I don't know that I have a fix for you (yet), but let me ask a few questions: What version of IE exhibits the issue? Does Mark of the Web (either set or not set) change the behavior? Have you included a meta tag to force the Help to display in the latest version of IE or in a specific version of IE? Can the developers force the window to be a specific version of IE? I ask these last few questions because you say that this Help system has been around for years, and besides Flare having been updated over the years, so has IE. (BTW, the Back button issue is widely reported on the MSDN, so your developers might research there.)
Nita
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RETIRED, but still fond of all the Flare friends I've made. See you around now and then!
ctremblay
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Joined: Thu Nov 05, 2015 7:13 am

Re: TOC open book icon missing in app-generated IE window

Post by ctremblay »

I have the identical issue and want to pass on info in case it assists in resolving the question.

Following are my answers to the questions Nita Beck asked:

What version of IE exhibits the issue? >>>>>>>>>> V11.0.9600.18124
Does Mark of the Web (either set or not set) change the behavior? >>>>>>>>> No
Have you included a meta tag to force the Help to display in the latest version of IE or in a specific version of IE? >>>>>>>>>> Yes - I have a meta tag to force Help to display in the latest version of IE
Can the developers force the window to be a specific version of IE? >>>>>>>>>> They tell me 'no', that our app opens in a container, and inside that container it opens a 'browser control' - not a 'browser window'

Any assistance is appreciated.
Cara Tremblay
CMI SOLUTIONS, INC.
KCinColorado
Propeller Head
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Joined: Tue Mar 20, 2012 11:00 am

Re: TOC open book icon missing in app-generated IE window

Post by KCinColorado »

Somehow, I never saw either or these replies way back when. So I apologize for never responding. Today I ran into the same problem again (missing open book icons in the TOC of my HTML5 Help) and, while searching for info, I came across my own message! I also found the work-around that we came up with back in 2015. I'm posting that workaround here in case others run into this problem (or I run into it again!). I also asked MadCap support to submit a bug report on my behalf.

If your HTML5 Help has the auto-synch TOC option turned on, and your Help is being launched by a Windows forms application, the open book icons in the TOC will not appear for the duration of the Help session unless the initial Help launch opens a topic that forces a book to open in the TOC. In my case, each application dialog box and window has its own Help topic, that describes the features of that window. And all of my window-level Help topics were NOT listed in the TOC. Therefore, if a user opened window A and pressed F1 or clicked the question mark in the corner of the window, the Help opened and displayed the topic for that window. The TOC books in the nav pane were all closed at that point. If the user then clicks on a book to open it, the closed book icon disappears and there's just a big blank space to the left of the book name (where the closed book icon was). No open book icon appears. However, if the user launches the Help from the Help menu, which takes them to the first topic in the book labeled Getting Started, then the book opens upon launch, and that topic is highlighted in the TOC and displayed in the document pane. And the open and closed book icons function properly for the duration of the Help session because a book was opened when the window was launched.

For what it's worth, I'm running Flare 2017 r2 (haven't upgraded to r3 yet) but this problem has been going on for many years. I hadn't encountered it in a while because I used to have all my window-level topics listed in a book in the TOC. I just had to reinstate those TOC entries to force the icons to work properly.

Looking forward to moving away from the navigation pane but am stuck with it for now. And would still like to see it work properly. (MadCap -- if you're listening --- PLEASE fix this issue! :*)
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