New Entries in DotNet Help Output

[super-structure]

I have several help topics in my TOC which have Mark as New? set to Yes in their properties. However, this doesn't seem to show up in the compiled DotNet output. Is there another setting to get these to have a "new" icon? This is Flare v4.2.1 & Help Viewer v4.1.



I searched online help and this forum, but haven't come up with anything so far.

[SteveS]

Hi Jason,

Do you 'clean' the output folders before you build?

[super-structure]

Steve,

I was under the impression that Flare deleted everything in an output folder before building a new set of the same. I do not manually delete anything prior to performing a build, though.

-Jason

[LTinker68]

Flare does delete the topics from the output folder, but it doesn't delete the output folder itself. With IE, that's enough to make IE think it's going back to the same site so it'll load info from the cache instead of reloading the entire site. Deleting the output folder before building tricks IE into think it's going to a new site, so it won't load from a cache.

That said, I don't know if DotNet Help has the same problem, since that's a custom MadCap viewer, but it could be borrowing info from elsewhere in Windows that makes it think it's not looking at new info. You could always try it and see if it works. It could also be a bug in DotNet Help output to not show the New icon -- I don't build DotNet Help output so I don't know if that's an existing bug.

[super-structure]

Lisa,

I'm still getting the same issue. I deleted the folder containing this output, set IE7 to delete temporary internet files on close*, and then re-built the output. The TOC items marked as new still don't show up.

This isn't an especially important issue, but one it seems could be relatively easily be fixed. I think I'll submit it as a bug/feature request and see if anything shakes out.

-Jason

* Though I cannot say with any certainty, I think that MadCap uses their own browser engine (in stead of IE, webkit, gecko, etc.). The only reason I say this is that I've noticed some very odd rendering glitches in Flare that I've never seen anywhere else.

[RamonS]

Flare uses the IE engine, which is the likely reason for rendering glitches, but also that not everything works on the preview, typically anything that links to a different topic. You see the link, but it won't bring up the other topic. If that's not it, what are the rendering glitches?

[super-structure]

Ramon,

Well, the two that stand most are with spaces and small caps. Occasionally, when I have entered a space character between two words, it doesn't show up. Viewing the source code, its there; it just isn't being rendered for some reason. Small caps were often rendered very poorly, with odd kerning or even overlapping characters. I observed that more in Flare 3.x, but I see the spaces thing all the time even in 4.2. I should note that this is in the Flare XML editor and *not* in the Help Viewer.

By the way, I did get a response from MadCap today. This behavior appears to only be supported in HTML Help.

-Jason