JavaHelp Features

Print-friendly Version

Key Features

Help Viewer

The help viewer window consists of a toolbar, content pane, and navigation pane. The content pane uses HTML 3.2 as its format for displaying topics. Lightweight Java components can also be used to add functionality.

Help Navigators

• Table-of-contents
  • Table-of-contents(TOC) supports a collapsible and expandable display of topics, unlimited number of hierarchical levels, and merging of multiple TOCs.
• Index
  • Index supports merging of multiple indexes. Both the TOC and index follow the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards.
• Full-text search
  • Full-text search is designed to be flexible and configurable. The search engine can reside on either the client or server side.

Flexible Display

The JavaHelp system can be displayed in its own primary window or embedded in an application. JavaHelp components, such as the navigators and content window, can be individually embedded in an application.

Compression and Encapsulation

The JavaHelp system is compressed and encapsulated in a single file using the JAR (Java ARchive) format. Compression and encapsulation is not required but is recommended.

Customization and Extensibility

The JavaHelp API is designed to allow flexibility in customizing and extending the user interface and functionality. Common ways in which the JavaHelp system can be extended include custom navigators, search engines, and HTML viewers.

Context Sensitive Help

Context sensitive help is provided in the JavaHelp API through the Swing toolkit of the Java Foundation Classes(JFC). JavaHelp API also supports ID mapping.

Merging Capabilities

The JavaHelp API provides a mechanism to support the merging of multiple components' help information before being presented to the user. The flexible merging mechanism applies to TOC, indexes and search databases.

Dynamic Updating

JavaHelp software allows a product's online help to be updated after it has been released by allowing an entire help system to be replaced or portions of it, if it is spread through multiple files.