Unable to change font color of text

[ncmiller]

Occasionally, I change the font color to red for part of the text in a help topic, to remind myself to verify the contents, revise the wording, etc. It often happens that I am unable to change it back to black, which is my default color for text.

I am having this problem right now with one sentence in a topic. The color shows as black in the Font Properties dialog, in the XML Editor, and even in the Preview. There is no span to unbind, and nothing seems amiss in "Show tags" either. Yet the published content shows the font as RED for that sentence!

How can I fix this?

[LTinker68]

Delete the output folder before building. It could be that it's loading cached content instead of your changed content. Normally Flare only deletes the contents of the output folder, not the output folder itself. Deleting the output folder before building tricks web browsers (specifically IE) into thinking that it's going to a site it's never been to before, so it'll load everything instead of going to the cache.

Alternatively, you could right-click in the content (topic) area, hold down the Shift key, and click Refresh (IE) or This Frame > Reload this Frame (Firefox) from the popup menu. That does a forced refresh, which is supposed to force the browser to reload everything from scratch, not from the cache. Although there are still times that doesn't seem to work. I just got in the habit of always deleting the output folder before building.

[rob hollinger]

Try switching the editor over to Layout(print) or Layout(web) to see if the font maintains its color.
If it switches to Red, it was probably set in the style sheet or inline under that medium.
You can check this in the code of the topic as well.

[ncmiller]

Ron, thank you for your reply. I switched to Layout(print) and the text still looked black. I had already checked the stylesheet and the code. The text still publishes in red (see response to other post as well). I need to keep working on this to get it figured out.

[ncmiller]

Lisa, thank you. Deleting the Output folder before republishing sounded like a really good idea, so I tried it. However, the text in those spots is still red. I also tried the right-click/Refresh suggestion - again, still red. I just can't figure out why that font color is so stubborn. It's very frustrating!

[ncmiller]

I tried both suggestions that had been posted (thank you again, respondents!), but still no luck. Any other ideas?

[LTinker68]

I'd open the topic in the Internal Text Editor and make sure there isn't any inline code or other tag enclosing the text that could be causing the problem, like if the text in question is part of a Flare effect, such as drop-down text or togglers, etc. Maybe you code post the page code for that paragraph that's giving you problems.

[ChoccieMuffin]

If it's just one sentence, could you use the "sledgehamer to crack a nut" approach and just delete the offending sentence and re-type it? I know that wouldn't explain what happened but might allow you to get moving.

Alternatively, for the future how about creating a span that changes the colour and use that, rather than formatting them locally? Might be easier to find and change back in the end.

[ncmiller]

Lisa, thanks again for responding. The problem does seem to occur only with dropdown text, and I am in the process of setting the font color to black (instead of default color) in the stylesheet for dropdown text. A teammate had tried that for me and said it was a successful workaround. I'm not entirely happy with it, though. I am at a loss to understand why it's so hard to change this font color!

[ncmiller]

ChoccieMuffin (love the name!) - Thanks for responding. I actually had already tried the sledgehammer approach, but that red font color still stubbornly refused to go away! However, I like your idea of "creating a span that changes the colour and use that, rather than formatting them locally". I did not even know you could do that, but I will definitely give it a try. Thanks again!

[NorthEast]

The colour isn't necessarily always applied with a span tag; if the paragraph was selected the colour will be applied to the p tag.
If that is the case, to get rid of that just place the cursor in the paragraph and click the Unformat icon (left of the font colour icon).

If that doesn't fix it, open the topic in Flare's internal text editor (not show tags) and look for any formatting there.
Check that first, as local formatting will take precedence over anything in the stylesheet.

[LTinker68]

The problem does seem to occur only with dropdown text, and I am in the process of setting the font color to black (instead of default color) in the stylesheet for dropdown text. A teammate had tried that for me and said it was a successful workaround. I'm not entirely happy with it, though. I am at a loss to understand why it's so hard to change this font color!

If you're talking about the text you click on to reveal the drop-down text (and not the text that's revealed), then it's because it's a hyperlink, of a sort. That is, it behaves like a hyperlink and has pseudo-classes, but in the authoring environment it doesn't use the standard <a> tag. You have to modify the pseudo-classes under the MadCap|dropDownHotspot style. Make sure you modify them in the order of link, visited, focus, hover so that the mouseover effect works properly. If it doesn't work properly, then you probably modified the styles out of order, so you need to open the stylesheet file in the Internal Text Editor and move around those styles until they're in that order.

[ncmiller]

Dave, thank you! I had never noticed the Unformat icon, but I will definitely give this a try.

[ncmiller]

Lisa, thanks for the additional information. It seems I keep finding out more and more about Flare. I really appreciate your help!

[doneal]

Can you post a copy of the html (text editor) of the relevant area of your document. Maybe a dozens line before and after the subborn red text.

[i-tietz]

Another piece of information needed: Do you build a Webhelp or a HTML Help or what else?

[i-tietz]

Dave, thank you! I had never noticed the Unformat icon, but I will definitely give this a try.

I just found a bug using this button, so be careful using it:
If I press this button, it depends on what format was applied before:
- if the text was bold before, the "font-weight" is set to "normal"
- if the text was italic before, the "font-style" is set to "normal"
- if the text was underlined before, the "text-decoration" is set to "none"

I reported a bug, because what actually those styles should be deleted, not set to the normal or non-decorated attribute.