Problem with display webhelp in Chrome

[Debbie van Cleef]

Hey everyone,

I have a webhelp that is displayed correctly in Firefox (v35) and IE (v9) with the menus collapsed. However in Chrome (v40) all menus are displayed expanded. Clicking on the little minuses to collapse the entries also doesn't work.

Any idea how i can fix this? I attached a screenshot of the Chrome browser.

[Tim Green]

This is only happening because you are testing your WebHelp locally without a server -- this is visible in the Address bar, where the protocol is file:// and not http://. Once it is online it will work fine in Chrome, and you can also test locally in Chrome if Chrome is your default browser, so that the WebHelp opens in Chrome automatically after being generated by Help & Manual. Alternatively, you can let it open in your default browser and then copy the URL from the Address: field of that browser and then paste that into Chrome. Then it will work, because that uses the address of the mini web server that Help & Manual uses to open WebHelp automatically.

There is an issue in Chrome that does not only affect Help & Manual. It also affects Webhelp generated by many other help authoring tools, along with many content management systems and e-learning systems. It caused by a poorly implemented "security" feature in Chrome that breaks HTML standards as well as WebHelp.

The bug only affects Webhelp opened locally, Webhelp opened from a web server or on the Internet or an intranet is not affected. So if you are just testing locally and deploying on a server you will not have any problems with Chrome.

In Help & Manual 6 we have implemented an integrated mini web server that is started automatically to display WebHelp when you display it automatically after publishing. This will then display in your default browser in the mini server and if that browser is Chrome it will work fine directly. If it is another browsers, you can then also test it in Chrome because the mini server will still be running. You just need to copy the 127.0.0.1... URL from the Address: bar of the default browser to the Address: bar in Chrome or any other browser to test there as well.

If you must open the help locally and without a web server in Chrome It is possible to work around it in two ways:

1: Start Chrome with the --allow-file-access-from-files switch in the command line.
This will work but it's not really something you can ask users to do.

2: Use a local web server and integrate it in your help system. There are a number of free mini web servers available with which this is possible, and they also make it possible to display Webhelp locally in Internet Explorer without a security warning.

Help & Manual 6's own mini web server is called HM2Go, and you can also integrate it in your WebHelp to be able to deliver it locally without a fully configured server environment. It is a single file less than 2MB in size. You can include this server with your own products and documentation free of charge and it even works on optical media like CDs and DVDs. Look up HM2Go in the Help & Manual 6 help index for full details.

[dvc]

Ah, right! When the output is launched by H&M, the webserver is used.

I however practically almost use a publication in the Task Manager. Then i manually open the output by double clicking on the index.html in windows explorer. Then the web server is not used.

Is there a way to automatically launch after publishing via the Task Manager?