Navigation pane in CSH webhelp gets replaced by topic

[Joseph_McMullen]

I am developing context-sensitive help using the webhelp target. I edited the skin so that when I build the help from Flare, the output displays in a browser with the navigation pane on the left, showing the contents of the help.

I provided the online help to the software developers. When the software is running, if a user clicks on a help button, a browser opens with the help topic associated with the specific task in the software GUI, as expected. The navigation pane on the left show the contents for the complete help system, as expected.

However, if the user then clicks on a topic name in the navigation bar, the selected help topic opens in both the main topic pane, and in the navigation pane. That is, the navigation pane's contents listing has been replaced by the text of a topic. There is no way to refresh the navigation pane.

The online help I built from Flare on my desktop did not have this problem with the navigation pane. Only when the help is launched from the software application does the navigation pane get replaced by the text of a topic. So this leads me to believe that some call from the code is not correct.

Any suggestions?

[NorthEast]

Only when the help is launched from the software application does the navigation pane get replaced by the text of a topic. So this leads me to believe that some call from the code is not correct.

Can you give some details on how the application opens the help?

Are you using one of the CSH methods described in the help?
http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare ... lopers.htm

[whunter]

This behavior -- topic opening in the TOC pane -- can occur if you are using IE 10 on a Windows 7 machine, and the page is being displayed in compatibility mode. (For example it may be common for people to have their browser configured to display intranet sites in compatibility mode, and if your output is hosted on an intranet web server then this would apply.) I reported this behavior to MadCap and a bug was logged. In the meantime I have to manually add a meta tag to the header of my output to essentially override compatibility mode when viewing the help.

Don't know if this is your problem but perhaps something to look into.

[Joseph_McMullen]

This is the javascript code used to open a specific topic in the online help I mentioned:

window.open("/vsphere-client/vsm-home-ui/OLH_Build/index_CSH.htm#working_with_groups", "DellVsmHelp");

[NorthEast]

This is the javascript code used to open a specific topic in the online help I mentioned:

window.open("/vsphere-client/vsm-home-ui/OLH_Build/index_CSH.htm#working_with_groups", "DellVsmHelp");

I would suggest changing "DellVsmHelp" to "MCWebHelp", and see if that helps.

When the WebHelp opens, it will actually change the window name to "MCWebHelp". Therefore, any subsequent calls made to "DellVsmHelp" will be opened in a new browser window/tab; but if you use "MCWebHelp", it will re-use the same help window.

This behaviour affects WebHelp only, not HTML5 help.

[Joseph_McMullen]

I am still experiencing the problem.

>In the meantime I have to manually add a meta tag to the header of my output to essentially override compatibility mode when viewing the help.

Can you share the format of this meta tag so I can try it?

thanks

[whunter]

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge"/>

For WebHelp you have to manually place this in Default.htm, Default_CSH.htm, and Default_Left.htm.