Advice: Flare 2017 R2 TopNav with TOC on left

[ruthhoward]

Hi folks

We've recently used Flare 2017 to implement a responsive help HTML5 output for access over FILE protocol that uses the masterpage to add a left-hand iFrame that is populated with a menuProxy that contains a TOC.
This provides a tripane-link view so that the TOC is always displayed.

However, we've just upgraded a test machine to Flare 2017 R2 and the new behavior of TOC interactive loading means that the TOC is loaded after the page - thus our CSS and JS customizations of its behavior are loaded before it exists and so they don't affect it. As a result we get a TOC displayed with every node fully expanded (down to 8 levels in some places), no expand/collapse icons and rather deep line heights. For a ~6000 topic TOC this takes a VERY long time and it is repeated every time you navigate, also clicking a TOC item loads the its target in the TOC iFrame not in the browser URL.

So we're wondering whether we need to start over with a new implementation that will get us a left-hand TOC. Anyone got any recommendations?

We tried the StrayGoat/Dave Lee implementation last year, it was lovely in our development project but didn't scale for very large systems because the TOC was embedded raw in every HTML page so the footprint of the entire help was large and compile times very long.

I've got a support call with MadCap to see what they recommend. Their page of example sites used to include doc sets which had the left-TOC feature but they've either been reworked or removed.

Thanks!
Ruth

[NorthEast]

Yep, this is causing me some problems - and will affect straygoat too.
I guess it's the risk you take when you tweak the output, but because MadCap don't do beta releases any more it comes as more of a shock.

I've not had much time to look at it so far, but one avenue I'm looking at is called a 'MutationObserver'.
I spotted this post on Stack overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3219758/detect-changes-in-the-dom
I'm testing out the second solution down called "This is the ultimate approach so far, with smallest code" - this seems to work and can detect changes in the menu, so I can run our script to modify the menu after this.

If you get any useful advice from MadCap, can you post their suggestions? Thanks.

[ruthhoward]

Absolutely Dave, will do! I have a call with them later.

[ruthhoward]

Hi Dave

I've had an hour on the phone with MadCap support and basically there's nothing to be done for our TOCs in frames or proxys using Flare 2017 R2. The only recommendation they had was to stick with 2017.

There's a big feature request for a left TOC for TopNav that they've added my support call to - you might want to get your name on there too.

Cheers
Ruth

[asbahr+]

Hi,

Did the 5/31/2017 update to 2017 R2 address this issue? I am having the same issue, so I had to go back to 2017.

Thanks for any additional info you can provide.

[NorthEast]

Did the 5/31/2017 update to 2017 R2 address this issue? I am having the same issue, so I had to go back to 2017.

No, the update just fixes some of the bugs.