Hello,
I am working with HM 5.6.0. Recently I switched to my new computer under Win 8.1. It looks like the scroll bars do not display correctly there. See appended screenshot. In the contents part, there are the arrows missing. In the left overview, they are correct.
This happens with CHM files which had been created before Win 8.1 times as well as with those I have created under Win 8.1.
So far I did not get any feedback about that from my users, so I don't know whether this is a local problem on my computer or a general one of Windows 8.1. I believe the latter is the case since it looks like also CHM files of other applications show the same behaviour.
Any idea how to solve this?
Thanks
Stephan
Scroll bars display wrongly in Win 8.1
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Scroll bars display wrongly in Win 8.1
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Tim Green
- Site Admin
- Posts: 23189
- Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
- Location: Bruehl, Germany
- Contact:
Re: Scroll bars display wrongly in Win 8.1
Hi Stephan,
This is most probably because you have an old template or skin that does not have the necessary X-UA-Compatible meta tags for CHM files. You need the following two lines in the meta tags of your HTML Page template (in your project if you are not using a skin and in your skin if you are using a skin):
This will ensure that the CHM viewer will use the highest rendering mode it supports (IE8) but not anything higher, and that in WebHelp IE will support the maximum rendering mode that the user's version of IE supports.
The HTML page template is located in Configuration > HTML Page Templates > Default (in your project if you are not using a skin, in your .hmskin skin file if you are using one).
IMPORTANT: Do NOT switch to the "Simple" tab after editing the source code in the template! Doing that will delete all the custom code and replace it with the default template. (You will bewarned if you try to do this.)
This is most probably because you have an old template or skin that does not have the necessary X-UA-Compatible meta tags for CHM files. You need the following two lines in the meta tags of your HTML Page template (in your project if you are not using a skin and in your skin if you are using a skin):
Code: Select all
<IF_CHM><meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" /></IF_CHM><IF_HTML>
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge" /></IF_HTML>The HTML page template is located in Configuration > HTML Page Templates > Default (in your project if you are not using a skin, in your .hmskin skin file if you are using one).
IMPORTANT: Do NOT switch to the "Simple" tab after editing the source code in the template! Doing that will delete all the custom code and replace it with the default template. (You will bewarned if you try to do this.)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)
Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)
Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
Re: Scroll bars display wrongly in Win 8.1
Hello Tim,
I am sorry, this does not change anything. Still no arrows...
And this does not solve the fact that there are no arrows also for all other CHM files from different software (which most likely had not been created using HM).
My header looks like this now:
Any other idea?
Best regards
Stephan
I am sorry, this does not change anything. Still no arrows...
And this does not solve the fact that there are no arrows also for all other CHM files from different software (which most likely had not been created using HM).
My header looks like this now:
...<head>
<title><IF_HTML><%TOPIC_TITLE_PATH%></IF_HTML><IF_CHM><%TOPIC_TITLE%></IF_CHM></title>
<IF_CHM><meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" /></IF_CHM><IF_HTML>
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge" /></IF_HTML>
<meta name="generator" content="Help & Manual">
<meta name="keywords" content="<%TOPIC_KEYWORDS%>">
<meta name="description" content="<%TOPIC_HEADER_TEXT%>">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=<%DOCCHARSET%>">
<link type="text/css" href="<%STYLESHEET%>" rel="stylesheet">
<link type="text/css" href="custom.css" rel="stylesheet">
<script type="text/javascript" src="nsh.js"></script>
Any other idea?
Best regards
Stephan
-
Tim Green
- Site Admin
- Posts: 23189
- Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
- Location: Bruehl, Germany
- Contact:
Re: Scroll bars display wrongly in Win 8.1
Hi Stephan,
Look at the main help CHM in Help & Manual itself. Do you see the arrows there? They definitely display normally on all Windows 8.1 test machines here. So if you don't see them there, then there is probably something wrong on your computer, possibly the CHM display components are damaged. Unfortunately, it's no longer possible to download the CHM components individually from Microsoft any more. You need to do a full repair install of Windows itself.
Look at the main help CHM in Help & Manual itself. Do you see the arrows there? They definitely display normally on all Windows 8.1 test machines here. So if you don't see them there, then there is probably something wrong on your computer, possibly the CHM display components are damaged. Unfortunately, it's no longer possible to download the CHM components individually from Microsoft any more. You need to do a full repair install of Windows itself.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)
Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)
Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
Re: Scroll bars display wrongly in Win 8.1
Hello Tim,
thank you.
Yes, also HM help displays that way. So I searched a while but did not find any useful help for Win in general.
Doing a repair is no option for me since I do not trust Win8.1 what it will do then. I do not want to reinstall all my apps...
For now, I am glad that this is only a local problem on my PC and not one which affects all my users. I believe I got this with some Windows update since I am sure that this displayed properly some time ago. (I would have noticed this earlier otherwise.)
Hopefully there will be another Windows update which will repair that...
Best regards
Stephan
thank you.
Yes, also HM help displays that way. So I searched a while but did not find any useful help for Win in general.
Doing a repair is no option for me since I do not trust Win8.1 what it will do then. I do not want to reinstall all my apps...
For now, I am glad that this is only a local problem on my PC and not one which affects all my users. I believe I got this with some Windows update since I am sure that this displayed properly some time ago. (I would have noticed this earlier otherwise.)
Hopefully there will be another Windows update which will repair that...
Best regards
Stephan
Re: Scroll bars display wrongly in Win 8.1
Hello Tim,
now I found the solution. Maybe interesting for other HM users also.
As I told you, I am using Win 8.1. With Win 8.1 (or maybe already with 8.0, don't know), M$ introduced their new Segoe UI font as the Windows default font. For this font you must enable the Cleartype technology, otherwise you can't read anything. However, even with Cleartype enabled, this displays very very blurred at least on our large 24" desktop monitors. It looks like M$ has designed that for the tablet and smartphone users (where it looks nice) but forgot all us WINDOWS desktop workers.. . You find tons of complains in the net about that.
So I searched how to overcome this. The solution is to disable the Segoe UI and replace it by Arial. Also you have to experiment with font sizes and you have to disable the Cleartype. Others may prefer Tahoma which had been the system font with Win7. Those changes can only be done directly in the registry since M$ also removed all those UI customization settings (border colour, title font etc.) with Win 8.1.
And now: if you have it like this, then Win8.1 shows the arrows like I described. If you set this back to Segoe, then the arrows are there again. It looks like M$ uses new characters for the arrows which are only contained in the Segoe font but not in the normal TTF fonts. And this is ONLY the case in CHM files! These boxes are the typical replacement for unknown characters...
It does not look like M$ will do anything about this blurred appearance. There are updates nearly every day but none of them solved this Cleartype problem so far. I myself found this solution by accident, because today there was a heavy bunch of updates, so I tried whether this had improved the Cleartype problem but this is not the case.
This gives one more question: Does anybody out there know whether and how one can define which character is used for the scroll bar arrows in CHM files? If that could be changed then this would be the solution.
Best regards
Stephan
now I found the solution. Maybe interesting for other HM users also.
As I told you, I am using Win 8.1. With Win 8.1 (or maybe already with 8.0, don't know), M$ introduced their new Segoe UI font as the Windows default font. For this font you must enable the Cleartype technology, otherwise you can't read anything. However, even with Cleartype enabled, this displays very very blurred at least on our large 24" desktop monitors. It looks like M$ has designed that for the tablet and smartphone users (where it looks nice) but forgot all us WINDOWS desktop workers.. . You find tons of complains in the net about that.
So I searched how to overcome this. The solution is to disable the Segoe UI and replace it by Arial. Also you have to experiment with font sizes and you have to disable the Cleartype. Others may prefer Tahoma which had been the system font with Win7. Those changes can only be done directly in the registry since M$ also removed all those UI customization settings (border colour, title font etc.) with Win 8.1.
And now: if you have it like this, then Win8.1 shows the arrows like I described. If you set this back to Segoe, then the arrows are there again. It looks like M$ uses new characters for the arrows which are only contained in the Segoe font but not in the normal TTF fonts. And this is ONLY the case in CHM files! These boxes are the typical replacement for unknown characters...
It does not look like M$ will do anything about this blurred appearance. There are updates nearly every day but none of them solved this Cleartype problem so far. I myself found this solution by accident, because today there was a heavy bunch of updates, so I tried whether this had improved the Cleartype problem but this is not the case.
This gives one more question: Does anybody out there know whether and how one can define which character is used for the scroll bar arrows in CHM files? If that could be changed then this would be the solution.
Best regards
Stephan