I've had to revert to Flare 3.1

[SteveS]

...been there, done that...

Sometimes it's good to vent

[yanick_leclerc]

I'm having this same issue with Webhelp. A help system that worked when compiled using Flare ver 3 doesn't work when compiled using Flare ver 4. Flare ver 4 inserts a #StartTopic=null before the context sensitive topic being called.

This manifests itself as a bug in the CSH file, which you can see if you compare two versions of the CSH file, one generated using ver 3 and the other using ver 4. The specific line of code in the CSH file is

if ( gCSHData.topic )
{
newHash += (firstParam ? "#" : "|") + "StartTopic=" + encodeURIComponent ( gCSHData.topic)
firstParam = false;
}

The "+ encodeURIComponent", is new to version 4 and is buggering up CSH calls.

[LTinker68]

Check to make sure that you have a start topic specified in the target. I think that's been mentioned elsewhere as a solution.

[yanick_leclerc]

Flare tech support just sent me a patch that contains a new MadcapUtilities.js file. So I think this is a bona fide bug. Anyone else experiencing this issue may want to contact them.

[yanick_leclerc]

The Flare service patch didn't work. I may revert to 3.1 as well.

[raikeswood]

Does anyone know whether Flare 4.1 has fixed this problem? When I get back I'll try myself and post an update, but if anyone already knows, please reply. Thanks.

[NickC]

I'm going to test this next week and will report back.

But I notice after installing 4.1 that the "corrected" version of MadCapUtilities.js (sent out to some of us a few weeks back who'd submitted a bug) seems to be included in 4.1. I tested a build with the new file last week using version 4.0 but the result was the same as before and I'm still without CSH (one week from a major release of our software...). So I'm not overly optimistic.

I'm not a javascript ace, but the changes in MadCapUtilities.js seem very slight compared to the version delivered with 4.0. Maybe there's a js guru out there who could report back on the difference between this file in versions 4.0 and 4.1...

Cheers

[raikeswood]

Does anyone know any reason my context-sensitive links no longer work when I build WebHelp with V4.0, but when I revert to V3.1 they work again? A few days ago I upgraded to V4.0 and rebuilt my help system, tested the output locally and even tested the CSH API Links from the Build menu. Passed with flying colo(u)rs. However, today when the application was built, the Help no longer works. It finds the frameset and navigation frames, but with a blank content frame. When I rebuilt with V3.1, apart from some CSS glitches, the problem went away. Any ideas why this might be? Any help would be appreciated.

As far as I can tell, upgrading to Flare 4.1 has solved this problem for me. Thanks Madcap I hope everyone with a similar CSH issue the best of luck.

[NickC]

Ditto...

CSH is back up and running for me in 4.1 which is as well 'cos we're shipping our product next week... Nice one MadCap.

Completely unrelated to the thread but I'll tag on another positive comment while I'm feeling upbeat. The XML editor in Flare seems to respond much quicker to typed input. In 4.0 I typed a word then sat back and watched it appear on screen. Now we're back to basic text editor speed (don't know why and maybe it was just my machine configuration but hallelujah all the same ).

[Richard Ferrell]

Nikic

There were issues in V4.0 when using a PageLayout and on a network drive that would make the XML editor really really really Slow. It depended on how your network was setup and the way Flare was being used.

[MarinaMichaels]

I don't know if this is helpful at all, but when one of our QA guys tried opening the WebHelp files locally using Firefox, he had problems with links not working because the help was looking for the link target at /Content/Content/, where there was actually only one /Content/ directory. I don't use spaces in my file names, so that wasn't the problem. I gave him the instructions for fixing Firefox (for the fix that was supposed to not be needed for Flare 4), and he said that fixed the problem.