Previous/Next Topic buttons

[RickHenkel]

I'm testing the new Previous/Next Topic buttons in Flare 5. I thought perhaps I could add those to Webhelp to enable users to page through the help, but it doesn't work that way for me. Here's what I'm seeing:

1. I click a topic in the TOC to move to that topic.

2. I click the Previous Topic or Next Topic button to move to a different topic.

3. I click a button again to move to another topic. Nothing happens here. Not until I click a topic in the TOC again does either button do anything. Even if I click the TOC entry for the topic that I'm currently viewing, the buttons now work.

In other words, the buttons work only one time--in either direction--for each time I click a TOC entry. That's not how they're supposed to work, is it? If so, the buttons seem kind of useless to me.

I don't have a browse sequence, but the "What's New in Flare 5" PDF says "f you do not have a browse sequence, Flare looks at the position of the current topic in your table of contents." So that shouldn't be the problem.

These are files that I have imported from FrameMaker into Flare 5 (many of our deliverables are FrameMaker-to-Flare Webhelp projects that we don't touch in Flare), so perhaps that is a factor. I will test some files that I created in Flare to see whether it makes a difference. If so, I would consider that a bug in Flare 5. Wouldn't you?

[wclass]

I've just noticed that Next/Prev will stop if it gets to a TOC entry that points to a bookmark within a topic, and it doesn't do anything if you have clicked on a book instead of a topic.
EDIT - and it jumps about if a topic is in there more than once.

[LTinker68]

EDIT - and it jumps about if a topic is in there more than once.

That I kind of figured it would do. It's the same problem with breadcrumbs. The way around it is to put the content of the topic into a snippet and create multiple topic files for each instance you want it to appear in the TOC, insert the snippet into each of those topics, then insert references to each of those topics into the TOC. (Hopefully that made sense.) That way the back/forward should work because it's going through individual topic files, even though the content of several files may be identical.

I'd also set all but one of those duplicates topics to not be searchable (via the topic Properties screen) -- you don't want a user to do a search and get responses to five topics that are identical.

[i-tietz]

No (real) answer from me. But: Have you looked at this thread:
http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... f=8&t=5850?

[kcann]

Hi

My goal is to have the Previous and Next buttons page through the WebHelp in the order of topics specified in the TOC. I created a browse sequence that links to my TOC. The buttons seem to work fine until I click a link within a topic, or on a TOC link.

Is this a bug or expected behaviour?

Thanks!

K

[Nita Beck]

I created a browse sequence that links to my TOC. The buttons seem to work fine until I click a link within a topic, or on a TOC link.

I'm trying to understand what you mean. If your output is WebHelp, you don't need to create a browse sequence at all, and even if you did, how is it that you linked it to your TOC? Maybe I'm hallucinating (which might be case for this middle-aged brain!), but I don't think there is a way to "link" a browse sequence to a TOC.

Can you give us more details about exactly what you've set up so that we can help you out?

For what it's worth, the Previous and Next buttons in my WebHelp systems (created with Flare 5) work as you want yours to work. Doesn't matter if I click a link within a topic or on a TOC link; Previous goes to previous in the TOC structure; Next goes to next in the TOC structure. In short, I'm not seeing the buggy behavior your are.

[kcann]

Hi

Here is the scenario (never mind the browse sequence, I've removed it).

1. I added the Next and Previous buttons to the WebHelp toolbar.
2. I generate the WebHelp output.
3. I click through the WebHelp using the Next and Previous buttons, which work fine.
4. Within a topic page, I click a hyperlink to go to another topic.
5. The Next and Previous buttons stop working altogether - nothing happens when I click either one.

Thanks again!

K

[kcann]

...until I click a TOC link, and then the buttons start to work again, until I click another link within a topic.

K

[ksoltys]

I am having the same problem with the Previous/Next buttons mentioned by other posters.

I am creating a new project from a short FrameMaker book. The Previous and Next buttons only move forward one topic from the selected topic, then stop. This is not the behaviour I'd expect, nor would my users, who are used to them working in projects we've been generating from WebWorks ePublisher, in which you can you the Previous/Next buttons to move forward or back through an entire help system.

Is this a bug?

[swills22]

I believe this happens when your TOC entry is linked to a bookmark instead of a topic.

[Nita Beck]

Excellent suggestion, Shelley. I never have TOC items linked to bookmarks, only to topics. Perhaps that's why I don't see this particular bug.

Nita

[kcann]

According to tech support, the bug is that you cannot have a variable within a TOC entry. That solved the problem!

K

[Nita Beck]

Well, tech support's response doesn't make sense to me either. I've got variables in my TOC entries, and my Previous and Next buttons work just fine as expected. I don't mean at all to sound smug -- that I've got it figured out and those don't. Rather, I'm just flummuxed about what is being reported and I regret that I have no solution. There's some other little gem that no one's hit on yet (except perhaps Shelly?).

[ksoltys]

According to tech support, the bug is that you cannot have a variable within a TOC entry. That solved the problem!

K

So I only have a couple of topics that have variables. But the Previous/Next buttons don't work past the click in any of my topics. So are you saying that having just one variable in a TOC entry breaks the functionality of those buttons in the entire TOC?

Keith

[ksoltys]

I believe this happens when your TOC entry is linked to a bookmark instead of a topic.

I am working with a project which was imported from a FrameMaker book and the TOC was created from the book's structure on import. In this case, do you know if Flare links the TOC via bookmarks? Could that be the problem?

If it is, I'd have to re-create the TOC manually (not a huge problem for this book because it's short), but it'd be a bit of a pain if I had to do it for every imported project.

Keith

[kcann]

Right, you cannot have any variables at all defined for a TOC entry. Of course, variables within the topics themselves are fine.

Hope that helps

K

[Nita Beck]

Right, you cannot have any variables at all defined for a TOC entry.

I politely beg to differ. I have a WebHelp project built from the ground up in Flare V5 whose TOC has loads of TOC entries with variables. The variables all resolve perfectly, and the Previous and Next buttons work perfectly. (Not to throw in a red herring, I do see a different bad result in the TOC itself in the WebHelp, which I won't go into here, but the Previous and Next buttons behave perfectly.)

Perhaps the issue has something to do with a project involving imports from Frame, as someone suggested?

[kcann]

Well, I removed the variables from the TOC, and now my WebHelp previous and next buttons work as expected. The project was never in Frame at all.

K

[Nita Beck]

This is SO curious! I'll try to think of something else that might be the underlying culprit.

[ksoltys]

Well, I removed the variables from the TOC, and now my WebHelp previous and next buttons work as expected. The project was never in Frame at all.

K

I just tried that and it didn't make any difference. I had two variables in my TOC.

And to add insult to injury, the Expand All and Collapse All buttons don't work either.

Keith

[LTinker68]

Did you manually type the variable into the TOC entry, or is the variable in the topic and you dragged the topic into the TOC Editor to create the TOC entry?

[kcann]

That's an interesting question. In my case, I had dragged in the topic with the variable, and then manually modified the variable. So, a combination of both.

Thanks

K

[LTinker68]

Why did you modify the variable? Dragging the topic into the TOC should have created a perfectly formatted variable. If you modified it then you may have changed something that's causing the problem. Although what version of Flare are you running? Dragging the topic into the TOC works in v5 and I think it did in v4, but lower versions didn't do that, I don't think -- you had to manually type the variable into the TOC entry. I think there was a bug in v4, though, based on where the variable appeared in the TOC entry, but I can't remember what the bug was or if I'm even remembering that correctly.

Could you post an example of what your TOC entry looks like, including the code for the variable?

[ksoltys]

I have fixed the problem I was having with the Previous/Next topic buttons in my project. The project was created by importing a FrameMaker book. According to Madcap support: "The problem is caused by the links in the TOC being to bookmarks. Word and Frame both insert these bookmarks from their own generated TOC entries. If you remove the bookmarks in the links in your TOC, the buttons will begin to work."

I used the UltraEdit text editor to clean up the file:

1. In UltraEdit's Configuration settings, enable Unix-style regular expressions and Perl syntax.

2. Search on the following regular expression: #[0-9a-z]*[[:word:]][0-9]*[[:word:]][0-9]*" and replace with ".

3. Search on the following regular expression: #[0-9a-z]*[[:word:]][0-9a-z]*[[:word:]][0-9]*[[:word:]][0-9]*" and replace with ".

All of the bookmarks in my TOC file had either one or two words at the beginning of the bookmark, separated by an _ and followed by two groups of numbers separated by _. I'm sure someone who is better with regular expressions could come up with something more compact, but this worked for me.

I assume that it woudl be a good idea to clean up the bookmarks out of the content files too -- can anyone confirm this? That would probably be trickier, and I'm not sure I could do it without a macro processor, which Flare lacks, unfortunately.

I am still having one other problem with the toolbar buttons - the Expand All and Collapse All buttons don't work.

[LTinker68]

...the Expand All and Collapse All buttons don't work.

That would depend on what you're expecting them to do. They don't expand and collapse the TOC. What they do is expand all drop-down effects in the currently visible topic, and possibly all togglers, expanding text, and other similar effects in the topic. I don't include the icons in my toolbar because, like the Quick Search field, they confuse the end users (IMHO), so I'm not entirely positive about which effects those icons work on. You'll see them in the Flare Help a lot.