Flare’s Preview As function is extremely useful. Using it, you can easily see what the topic you are working on will look like in any of your target outputs, using the styles, conditions and variables that your chosen target would use. But, it’s modal, so you must close it before you can do anything else in Flare. This is inconvenient if you spot a problem in the preview, so want to get back to your Flare topic to fix the problem, then return to the preview to continue checking it.
Wouldn’t it be lovely if the Preview As window was non-modal? I submitted a feature request to MadCap against Flare 8, and I suspect many others have too. So far it’s not been implemented, but completely by accident, I’ve found a way to make the Preview As PDF window modal.
Mid-way through the lifetime of Flare 10, Preview As for PDF targets suddenly started creating a modal browser window, followed by a non-modal PDF window. This meant I could close the browser window (so I could access my topic again) but still have the PDF open in a stand-alone window. I was delighted, and assumed it was something that MadCap had done in an update, or perhaps something that Adobe had done in one of their regular updates.
Then I got a new laptop, and after I’d ported all my applications, I found that Flare’s Preview As for PDFs had become modal again. So I did a bit of digging to find out what was different about my Flare, Acrobat and browser settings on my old laptop. Here’s what I found.
The issue is to do with the way that PDF files display in your browser – Flare uses a browser window for the PDF preview. To make the PDF non-modal, you need to stop the PDF opening directly in your browser. Then the browser window is modal, but the PDF opens in a stand-alone window which isn’t modal. Here’s how to do this for IE11,which is the browser I use.
In Internet Explorer, select Tools > Manage Add-Ons. In the Add-on Types pane, select Toolbars and Extensions. Make sure the Show option at the bottom of this pane is set to All add-ons. Look for the Adobe section and make sure that Adobe PDF Reader and any Adobe Acrobat extensions are Disabled. That’s it. Now Flare’s Preview As will create PDF previews as non-modal windows. You can close the modal browser window, but leave the PDF open while you get back to your topic and make any changes you want as you work through the PDF preview.
The equivalent instructions for other common browsers are here: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/display-pdf-in-browser.html
Notes from a Small Author 