Webhelp Project Loads Blank Frames

[jpowers]

After building a webhelp project and uploading it to our live web server, the project sometimes does not load correctly after someone attempts to access it via any browser (the page loads with blank frames and no content). If they use IE8, they can see in the bottom-left corner of the browser window that there is a Javascript error that points to a specific line number in the MadCapAll.js file. If you open this file in a text editor that has line numbers (we are using TextDiff), they see this. As you can see from the screenshot, it seems that the first three characters on the line indicated by the arrow are causing the problem. If we use the text editor's find/replace feature to remove all of these characters, then save the file and upload it to the live web server (replacing the original MadCapAll.js file), the page loads fine in all browsers.

Some additional information...

- We suspect this is an encoding issue. When the page loads with the blank frames, if the user manually changes the browser's encoding setting to Unicode (UTF-8), the page loads fine. For what it's worth, we have tried adding the following HTML code to our webhelp project's master's page: <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />. Even with this code, none of the browsers we've tried are automatically switching to the correct encoding and the page is loading with blank frames.

- This issue only occurs after some builds, not all. In other words, if we build five times in a week, maybe one of those builds will display blank frames for all users who attempt to access the live webhelp project.

How can we resolve this problem?

[Pohutukawa]

I'm looking forward to a solution, also. In just this past day, I have encountered this problem for the first time. Now it happens repeatedly.

It happens only with IE 8, but I haven't tried it with IE 7 or IE compatibility mode.

Firefox 3.0 has no problem displaying WebHelp (knock on wood).

When I click the Search panel button (left side column in WebHelp), the error occurs and the Search field never appears.

I have builds to produce shortly, and I'm very concerned about shipping any WebHelp project.

FWIW, I tried building the project using Flare 5 and Flare 6, but I got the same results.

The only change that I had made to my WebHelp project since this problem surfaced in the past 24 hours was to create a synonym file, which I had created just yesterday afternoon.

[ksoltys]

This looks similar to a problem we experienced, which was traced to the fact we are using WebLogic. Our server is not configured for the proper mime type for XML and WebHelp projects display blank frames in IE7. They work fine in Chrome and Firefox.

See this thread: http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... gic#p59031

In our case, we cannot get the server reconfigured, and will probably have to stop using Flare.

Regards
Keith

[Pohutukawa]

Well, here is what I discovered: The problem is related to the creation of a synonym file.

I have five seperate Flare projects. Two days ago, I created a synonym file in one of the projects. (The other projects do not have synonym files.)

It was then upon doing a build of the project with the synonym file that I encountered this problem using IE 8. That is, when I clicked the Search button, which is on the left side panel, the WebHelp project would freeze up. I did builds of each of my other projects (without synonyms), and those projects worked fine in IE 8.

This morning I removed the synonym file from that one project, did a build, and voila, the project runs fine in IE 8!

What are the odds this issue will be fixed in Flare 6...

[RamonS]

What are the odds this issue will be fixed in Flare 6...

I cannot give a definitive answer, but contact support or at least file a bug report here.