WebWorks Help 5.0 context-sensitive help with Internet Explorer 7

You may find it difficult to test your context-sensitive help implementation when you call the help via the URL method and the browser that launches it is Internet Explorer v 7. The behavior you'll typically see in this situation is that the browser will launch only the entry-point file for the help set (i.e., index.html or wwhelp.htm).

There has been some confusion regarding this issue, so I thought I'd try to clear up any misconceptions. As I understand it, here’s the way it works:

1. You (or your application) pass a URL string to the browser, including the context arguments.

2. Due to the dynamic content of the pages and/or settings in your browser, Internet Explorer 7 displays a security warning.

3. After dispatching the security warning (or for other reasons), the browser reposts the original URL—sans context arguments. In a normal web server environment, this is ok (and perhaps even preferred) because the server retains the original request. In the local environment, however, the arguments are not retained.

4. On a local machine, the repost includes only the basic path to the requested file, so that’s what the browser displays. The arguments aren’t included in the repost, so the browser doesn’t even know they were there. This is why only the entry-point file is shown.

If you edit the URL after it loads, or if you open the file in another tab, it works because the active content display for the particular page has already been approved; the URL doesn’t need to be reposted.

IE6 did not have this security measure in place. FireFox does not behave this way either. You will only experience this problem in IE7. Because this is a function of the browser configuration and is not caused in any way by the WebWorks output, there is nothing we can do to fix the problem right now.

We did go so far as to update the API so that context-sensitive help can be implemented with IE7 in this way. Currently, the WebWorks Help SDK (API) is the only way to consistently use context-sensitive help with the WebWorks Help 5.0 output format. You can read more about the SDK and download the necessary files from our wiki article here: http://wiki.webworks.com/DevCenter/Projects/WebWorksHelp

Note, though, that we cannot provide additional support for the SDK at this time. The information and downloadable files on the wiki are provided as-is, and the only documentation we have for the SDK/API is available there.

CategorySolutionsOutputWebWorksHelp CategorySolutionsOutputCsh