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Ah.
My situation is that our WebHelp (built in Flare 3.1) is standalone (no
hooks for the apps) _meant_ to live on the customer's hard drive, or at
least on their CD drive. However, for our in-house purposes (review and
testing and general storage-in-case-kevin-gets-hit-by-a-bus) I always
store it on a network drive and access it from there. It's never served,
just accessed as files-in-a-folder. In that situation, only Firefox
showed the problem (every click of the search tab caused the search
function to hang while trying to start. No problem clicking another tab
(like ToC or Glossary) and resuming in the same session, but attempting
to start the search would fail.
I was hoping (told) that Flare 4 fixed it, and was in the middle of
chasing the paperwork within my employer company. Even if it doesn't
fix it for me, Your fix with the empty Filters.xml file did the trick,
and I've alerted the other writers in our company.
Thanks,
- Kevin
________________________________
From: beelia [mailto:beelia -at- gmail -dot- com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 8:51 PM
To: McLauchlan, Kevin
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Madcap Flare and Firefox 3
Kevin,
In my application the search hang is not about Firefox - it is
completely browser-independent. A Java exception is thrown every single
time the Search button is clicked, terminating the search session and
causing a hang.
But my help system is an integral part of a web archive, so
there is an additional layer that may explain the reliability of that
failure.
Another difference is that my help system does not hang on any
local instance in any browser - only when it is accessed through the
application's Help link. In fact, the problem was invisible for a long
time because local WebHelp searches worked just fine when I tested it on
my desktop.
The search hang issue wasn't discovered until it was reported by
one of our engineers in India. I filed an internal bug in April of last
year, but there were so many possible causes to rule out that I didn't
file it with Madcap until June, when I was finally sure it was a Flare
3.1 bug.
I have since updated Flare several times (I am now on 4.1.30)
and the problem persists. I've confirmed that the bug is still open at
Madcap. The fact that you have experienced the same problem under
different circumstances suggests that this is a really difficult problem
to fix.
In the meantime, the Filters.xml patch process is still
preventing search hangs and the users are not seeing it. I hope it works
for you too.
Bee
On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 5:43 AM, McLauchlan, Kevin
<Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> wrote:
Cool.
Thanks. Seems to work.
Do we have any idea why the other browsers don't show
the problem?
- Kevin
________________________________
From: beelia [mailto:beelia -at- gmail -dot- com]
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 10:14 PM
To: McLauchlan, Kevin
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Madcap Flare and Firefox 3
Kevin,
This sounds exactly like the "Search Hang" bug
that I filed with Madcap some time ago. It's not fixed yet.
The search session terminates and hangs because
of a problem with the Search Filter Set feature, which I've never used.
The process is unsuccessfully looking for a file called "Filters.xml",
which does not exist if you haven't defined a filter set.
To patch this problem, every time I do a build,
I drag an empty "Filters.xml" file into the Data folder (under Output)
after the WebHelp build completes. This keeps the search from hanging
because the file, although it is empty, is found, so the session
termination does not occur.
Because my help is part of the application, I
then submit the patched set of output files to the build via Perforce.
Hope this helps.
Bee
On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 12:50 PM, McLauchlan,
Kevin <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> wrote:
I was just reviewing my WebHelp with
Firefox 3.0.5 on Win XP Pro X64,
when I noticed that the Search function
cannot be invoked. Click the
"Search" tab in the accordion menu, and
a frozen "LOADING" progress bar
just sits there forever.
Didn't we already have that fixed,
months ago? Firefox says there are
no new updates pending, so . . .
Anybody else makin' WebHelp? Is Firefox
3 working OK for you?
I don't see the problem on my old
machine that still has Firefox 2.
IE7 works fine.
Safari 3.2.1 works fine, but it does
display the lower half of a bogus
horizontal scroll-bar at the top of the
accordion menu - which the other
browsers do not.
Opera? Wish I could tell you, but I
can't get through to their download
site, today (that might be just somebody
goofing with our company
network, though).
- Kevin
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may be privileged and confidential, and therefore,
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in
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copying
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The information contained in this electronic mail transmission
may be privileged and confidential, and therefore, protected
from disclosure. If you have received this communication in
error, please notify us immediately by replying to this
message and deleting it from your computer without copying
or disclosing it.
ComponentOne Doc-To-Help 2009 is your all-in-one authoring and publishing
solution. Author in Doc-To-Help's XML-based editor, Microsoft Word or
HTML and publish to the Web, Help systems or printed manuals. http://www.doctohelp.com
Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/
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