Previous topic / Next topic toolbar buttons

[MC Hammer]

Hi everyone,
I am trying to understand how the Previous topic / Next topic toolbar buttons work.

I produce WebHelp 2.0 (HTML5) outputs and have added these two buttons to the toolbar buttons.
They appear in my output, in two places: on the topic toolbar AND at the bottom of each topic.

However, they do not always work. Let's consider the attached screen shot (please ignore punctuation, capitalisation, etc as this is just a draft).

Next_previous.gif

The currently opened topic is the Display page (I am automatically synchronising the TOC). If I click on the Previous topic button, I expect the help for the Dashboard Page to open (as it is the next in the TOC). Similarly, if I click on the Next topic button, I expect the Report Page help to be displayed. This does not happen.

These buttons only seem to work if the TOC entries are not on the same level. The help in Flare states that:

if you do not have a browse sequence, Flare looks at the position of the current topic in your table of contents (TOC) and opens the previous / next topic before / after it.

So what am I missing here?

I do not use browse sequences but I would expect these buttons to work on TOC entries that are on the same "level" in the TOC (such as Data Source Page, Observed Streams Page, Modify Page, Act Page, Dashboard Page, Display Page, Report Page, Track Page and Export Page) as well as TOC entries that are on different levels.

Also is there a way to hide the Previous /Next topic buttons from the end of each topic?

Thanks in advance for any help / input.

[kwag_myers]

Someone else posted an issue with HTML5: Navigate Buttons Not Working in HTML5 output. As I stated in that thread, I'm not that familiar with HTML5 output, but I'm wondering now if there's a problem with the skin files. Have you tried a different skin?

Without being able to recreate the issue, it's tough to do anything but offer an educated guess.

[MC Hammer]

Have you tried a different skin?

No, but that seems like a very good idea. Thanks!

[Nita Beck]

Marie-Claire, does the problem happen in all browsers or only some browsers? Also, what version of Flare are you using?

HTML5 output from Flare 9 exhibited several issues when viewed with Internet Explorer 11 (no fault of MadCap, but rather of Microsoft; IE11 came out after Flare 9). Flare 10 caught up with IE11. If you're using Flare 10, in your HTML5 target, go to the Advanced tab, select the "Add meta tags to content" and enter "<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge" />" (without the first and last ") in the text box. Then rebuild. Does that solve the issue?

[MC Hammer]

Hi Nita,
Thanks for your input. I am using Flare 8.1.2 and the Navigation buttons do not work for my three test browsers (IE10, Firefox 29.0.1 and Chrome 35.0.1916.114 m). We are not using IE11 as it currently causes issues with Juniper networks components that some colleagues use when working from home.
I haven't tried to use a different skin yet, as suggested by kwag_myers. However, I have tailored to my needs a skin that I downloaded from the MapCap website and I have just noticed now that these are for Flare 10 , so I am wondering if this is not the root of my problem.
Is there any JavaScript I could enter in the Toolbar tab of the skin for the PreviousTopic and NextTopic buttons that would do what I expect these buttons to do. In my opinion, this would be the best workaround for the time being, until a fix is found for the IE11 issue by our Help Desk, and until we decide to migrate to Flare 10.

[MC Hammer]

*** UPDATE ***
Just to let you know that we upgraded to Flare v10 and that the navigation buttons are working fine so this is no longer an issue.
However we are experiencing problems with scripts for the compiled HTML Help output. A script is used in topics containing large tables, in order to show / hide columns, depending on which data the user wants to see. I will investigate and post in the appropriate section if I cannot fix the problem.