No secondary pages after remove "/Content" directory

[kevinmcl]

There's an option when declaring publishing destinations to not include the /Content directory. This flattens the file structure by one level, and all files that would have been in /Content are in the root level of the published Help instead. For reasons that need not concern this discussion, I tried that.

Separately, we have a START_HERE.html page that is NOT part of the Help, but which:

a) points to some PDFs on the CD (or copied with the docs onto the customer's PC)
b) points to some docs on our company website
c) points to some standard docs on other people's websites
d) points to the introductory topic (startpage.htm) of the Help
e) points to some Installation Instruction topics for each of several operating systems, within the Help

To accomplish item "d", I have had a link of the form:

<a href="./800274-012lunasa_4-4_webhelp/startpage.htm" target="_blank"1>Luna SA 4.4 Help System </a><br>

which fires up the Help, with all the navigation goodies (ToC, Index, Search...) and with my pre-designated intro page as the content in the main frame of the browser window.

To accomplish that item "e", I have always had a half-dozen links in my START_HERE.html page, of the form:

<a href="./800274-012lunasa_4-4_webhelp/startpage.htm#StartTopic=content/windows_install.htm" target="_blank">Click for Windows installation instructions</a><br>
<a href="./800274-012lunasa_4-4_webhelp/startpage.htm#StartTopic=content/aix_install.htm" target="_blank">Click for AIX installation instructions</a><br>

and so on. That construction, as you see, invokes the frames with the navigation and other stuff, then populates the main pane of the Help window with whatever Help topic is named after #StartTopic= .

Now that I've gotten rid of /Content directory in the build/publish process (by unchecking the option, IIRC), I modified my START_HERE.html page to have EXACTLY the same inbound links as before, EXCEPT that I stripped out content/ from each link.

The main inbound link still works, as expected.

The links with #StartTopic= no longer work. I have checked, and the "windows_install.htm", "aix_install.htm" and other files that once lived in /Content are now living in the root of my published help... along with the file startpage.htm by the way.

<a href="./800274-012lunasa_4-4_webhelp/startpage.htm#StartTopic=windows_install.htm" target="_blank">Click for Windows installation instructions</a><br> for example, does not work.

Why?

I can go back to using the /Content directory for now, in the interest of having functioning Help, but... what is broken?
Something silly that I'm overlooking, no doubt, but... WHAAAAAAAAAT!!

If it makes a difference, I still do have one layer of sub-directories below the root (which used to be those directories below /Content), and the actual introductory page pointed to by startpage.htm is in one of those sub-directories.

Thanks,

- Kevin

[kevinmcl]

OK, so that didn't work. Nobody can read my impenetrable prose.

Open your startpage.html for your own webhelp.
It invokes the accordion menu on the left (with ToC, Search, etc.) and the toolbar across the top (of the browser window), and populates the middle part with whatever page is recorded as var gDefaultStartTopic = "your-intro-page.htm";

Now, from the ToC open any other page.
The outside frames with the ToC and the WebHelp toolbar... they stay right where they are, while the contained page "your-intro-page.htm" is replaced by "that-other-page-you-clicked-in-the-ToC.htm"

The whole, entire point of the links that I described in the original post is to accomplish that same operation (open a non-default help topic with the navigation pane and toolbar properly surrounding it) from OUTSIDE the WebHelp. And it worked fine for five years.

When the anchor link to that-non-default-page was #StartTopic=/Content/some-non-default-page.htm my links worked. I jumped into the middle of Help with all the goodies surrounding the page.

When the link to that-non-default-page was some-non-default-page.htm or /some-non-default-page.htm or ./some-non-default-page.htm or even ../some-non-default-page.htm or <entire-absolute-path-to->some-non-default-page.htm it just won't work.

Presumably, if Flare removes /Content from the build, then it neatens-up everything else. So why can't I do nothing more than remove '/Content/' from my links and have them still work?

What am I overlooking?

- Kevin (vexed)

[GregStenhouse]

A quick check on my test project and direct links to content files work fine with and without the option "Do not use "content" folder in output".

If "start_here.html" is in the same directory as "startpage.htm", why is the link "<a href="./800274-012lunasa_4-4_webhelp/ ..." ? Perhaps, taking a stab in the dark, "800274-012lunasa_4-4_webhelp" holds an older version of your webhelp (with the content folder) and that is why your links to content files aren't working.

For simplicity, try just <a href="startpage.htm#StartTopic=windows_install.htm" ...

Cheers
Greg