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| <h1>User Assistance Overview</h1> |
| |
| <div class="homeitem3col"> |
| <h3>Overview</h3> |
| |
| <p> |
| User Assistance is a component of the Eclipse Platform whose mission is to provide for assisting users of Eclipse |
| applications in all phases of the usage cycle. It is not a single workbench artifact but rather a collection |
| artifacts tailored to provide a particular flavor of assistance. |
| </p> |
| |
| <p> |
| The User Assistance component includes the following systems and mechanisms: |
| </p> |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li>Welcome</li> |
| <li>Help</li> |
| <li>Cheat sheets</li> |
| <li>UI Forms*</li> |
| <li>Samples</li> |
| <li>Browsers</li> |
| </ul> |
| |
| <p> |
| * Although UI Forms are strictly a SWT-based toolkit for creating slick user interfaces and are not directly aimed at |
| User Assistance, it is listed here because it is owned by the same team and because form-based UIs are typically |
| easier to understand and use. In addition, UI Forms are particularly good at integrating user assistance content |
| directly into the user interface. This reduces the need for users to leave the work area to read user assistance |
| content. |
| </p> |
| |
| <p> |
| User Assistance is more than the current list of technologies. Our mission can be summed up in the following way: |
| </p> |
| |
| <p> |
| <em>The User Assistance component is a hub for all ideas and mechanisms that serve the purpose of making Eclipse |
| applications easier to use both for new and returning users.</em> |
| </p> |
| |
| <p> |
| We will briefly describe the current elements of the User Assistance component the following section. |
| </p> |
| </div> |
| |
| <div class="homeitem3col"> |
| <h3>Welcome</h3> |
| |
| <p> |
| <a href="http://help.eclipse.org/topic/org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv/guide/ua_intro.htm"> |
| Welcome</a> support provides for greeting the first time users of an Eclipse application with a series of pages |
| that are meant to introduce him/her to the application and make the initial experience favorable. The implementation |
| can simply guide the user through the initial setup and then offer common tasks to do in the application, offer |
| tutorials, samples (for development applications), links to online resources, news etc. |
| </p> |
| |
| <p> |
| The trigger and lifecycle of the welcome support is controlled by the workbench. If welcome content is registered, |
| it will be opened on fresh startup. Once closed, it can be reopened from the Help menu. In the most direct form, |
| welcome can be written using pure SWT widgets. However, a more typical scenario is to use the support provided by the |
| User Assistance intro component and author welcome content as a series of web pages, using either XML, HTML or XHTML |
| format. |
| </p> |
| |
| <p> |
| When XML or XHTML formats are used, welcome content can be particularly flexible because content reuse, content |
| contribution and dynamic content are supported. |
| </p> |
| |
| <img class="illustration" src="images/overview_welcome.png" alt="Welcome page"/> |
| </div> |
| |
| <div class="homeitem3col"> |
| <h3>Help</h3> |
| |
| <p> |
| <a href="http://help.eclipse.org/topic/org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv/guide/ua_help.htm">The Eclipse platform's |
| help</a> facilities provide the raw building blocks to structure and contribute documentation to the platform. It |
| does not dictate structure or granularity of documentation. You can choose the tools and structure for your |
| documentation that suits your needs. The help plug-in allows you to describe your documentation structure to |
| the platform using a table of contents (toc) file. |
| </p> |
| |
| <p> |
| Help system can be used in three modes: |
| </p> |
| |
| <ol> |
| <li><b>Integrated</b> - If you are creating an Eclipse-based product, the help system is automatically provided. |
| You can launch the help browser from the <b>Help</b> menu in the workbench, or through welcome or dynamic help |
| links.</li> |
| <li><b>Stand-alone (local)</b> - If you are creating an application that is not based on the Eclipse framework, |
| you can still use the Eclipse help system. Your application can package and install the <i>stand-alone help |
| system</i>, a very small version of Eclipse that has had everything except the help system stripped out of it. |
| Then, your application can make API calls from its <b>Help</b> menu, or from UI objects, to launch the help |
| browser. The stand-alone help system has all the features of the integrated help system, as described in the |
| following sections. However, it interacts with the application UI for features such as context-sensitive help |
| or active help will vary. All features except dynamic help and active help are supported.</li> |
| <li><b>Infocenter (served)</b> - You can also allow your users to access the help system over the Internet or |
| their intranet, by installing the stand-alone help system and the documentation plug-ins on a server. The |
| application accesses the documentation by calling a URL, and the help system is shown in their web browser. The |
| infocenter help system can be used both for client applications and for web applications, either of which can have |
| their help accessed remotely. All features except dynamic and active help are supported.</li> |
| </ol> |
| |
| <img class="illustration" src="images/overview_help.png" alt="Online help"/> |
| <img class="illustration" src="images/overview_dynamic_help.png" alt="Dynamic help"/> |
| </div> |
| |
| <div class="homeitem3col"> |
| <h3>Cheat sheets</h3> |
| |
| <p> |
| <a href="http://help.eclipse.org/topic/org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv/guide/ua_cheatsheet.htm"> |
| Cheat sheets</a> are a type of assistive technology that is meant to lead users through sequential tasks. They |
| follow the user through steps, offer help links for each, provide an option to perform the step for the user or |
| let the user do it herself. Cheat sheets are available from the Help menu but can be programmatically opened whenever |
| a task assistance is needed. |
| </p> |
| |
| <img class="illustration" src="images/overview_cheatsheets.png" alt="Cheat sheets"/> |
| </div> |
| |
| <div class="homeitem3col"> |
| <h3>UI Forms</h3> |
| |
| <p> |
| <a href="http://help.eclipse.org/topic/org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv/guide/forms.htm"> UI Forms</a> is a toolkit |
| based on SWT for creating powerful Web-like user interfaces. It is not strictly part of user assistance but is used as |
| a technology for many User Assistance artifacts (implementation of initial user experience for platforms that do not |
| support embedded browser, dynamic help view, cheat sheets etc.). For example, PDE multi-page editors use UI Forms |
| extensively: |
| </p> |
| |
| <img class="illustration" src="images/overview_forms.png" alt="UI Forms"/> |
| </div> |
| |
| <div class="homeitem3col"> |
| <h3>Samples</h3> |
| |
| <p>Samples are code artifacts that are imported into the workspace as projects so that users can browse the code and |
| launch it. User Assistance provides support for samples that ensures the code compiles correctly regardless of the |
| settings and the environment. When launched from the Welcome window, a Forms-based view provides assistance for the |
| sample. |
| </p> |
| |
| <img class="illustration" src="images/overview_samples.png" alt="Samples"/> |
| |
| <p> |
| Support for samples will be reworked and opened up in the coming releases. Watch User Assistance home page for design |
| documents in the near future. |
| </p> |
| </div> |
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