Trouble viewing WebHelp in Chrome

[Alise Suebsanh]

As of Google Chrome version 43.0.2357.81m released on May 25, 2015, two of our WebHelp projects are not displaying correctly in Chrome. They work fine in Internet Explorer and Firefox. We published updates to these WebHelp projects around this time, so most likely it’s user error on my part, but I didn’t make any changes to the skins or how we publish the projects, just made some minor content updates.

When you open the links, it appears to load correctly, but then stalls and eventually the page is replaced with the Chrome’s “Aw, Snap! Something went wrong with displaying this webpage.” message.

I’m using Help and Manual version 6.5.2 Build 3002 and the projects are using customized premium pack 2.51 skins. The other projects using the same premium pack skins have also been updated since this time, but are still working just fine in Chrome.

Hoping someone else may have reported a similar issue and someone knows what happened…

Thanks!

Alise

[Tim Green]

Hi Alise,

Your copy of Help & Manual 6 is out of date. Please get the installer for the free update here:

http://www.helpandmanual.com/downloads.html#oldver

You are only having problems with Chrome because you are testing your WebHelp locally without a server. 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 the current version of 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.

[Alise Suebsanh]

Thanks, Tim.

This is happening on our web server for customers hitting out website, not just locally...I'll try upgrading HM6 and regenerate/publish and see if that helps...If that doesn't work, I'll try the other suggestions.

[Tim Green]

This is happening on our web server for customers hitting out website, not just locally...

If that is the case you may be using an outdated or damaged skin for your WebHelp. Please contact me at our support mail address support AT ec-software.com (replace the AT with @) with details of the skin you are using and we will help you out directly.