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| <h1>Eclipse User Assistance |
| Overview</font></h1> |
| <p>The Eclipse 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>User Assistance component includes the following systems and mechanisms:</p> |
| <ul> |
| <li>Online Help system for serving traditional help documents</li> |
| <li>Initial User Experience (Welcome) support</li> |
| <li>Cheat sheets</li> |
| <li>UI Forms<font color="#800000">*</font></li> |
| <li>Samples</li> |
| <li>Eclipse Automation</li> |
| </ul> |
| <p><font color="#800000">* 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 |
| easer 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.</font></p> |
| <p>Eclipse User Assistance is more than the current list of technologies. Our |
| mission can be summed up in the following way:</p> |
| <p><b>Eclipse 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.</b></p> |
| <p>We will briefly describe the current elements of the User Assistance |
| component the following text.</p> |
| <h2>Online Help</h2> |
| <p> |
| <a href="http://help.eclipse.org/help31/topic/org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv/guide/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</font> </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.<br> |
| </li> |
| <li><b>Stand-alone (local)</font></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.<br> |
| </li> |
| <li><b>Infocenter (served)</font></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> |
| <p align="center"> |
| <img border="0" src="images/overview-help.png" width="600" height="450"></p> |
| <p align="center"> |
| <img border="0" src="images/overview-dynamic-help.png" width="298" height="837"></p> |
| <h2>Initial User Experience (Welcome)</h2> |
| <p> |
| <a href="http://help.eclipse.org/help31/topic/org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv/guide/workbench_advext_intro.htm"> |
| Initial User Experience</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> |
| <p align="center"> |
| <img border="0" src="images/overview-welcome.png" width="480" height="379"></p> |
| <h2>Cheat sheets</h2> |
| <p> |
| <a href="http://help.eclipse.org/help31/topic/org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv/guide/workbench_advext_cheatsheets.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> |
| <p align="center"> |
| <img border="0" src="images/overview-cheatsheets.png" width="200" height="559"></p> |
| <h2>UI Forms</h2> |
| <p> |
| <a href="http://help.eclipse.org/help31/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> |
| <p align="center"> |
| <img border="0" src="images/overview-uiforms.png" width="460" height="433"></p> |
| <h2>Samples</h2> |
| <p>Samples are code artifacts that are imported into the workspace as projects |
| so that users can browse the code and lunch 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> |
| <p align="center"> |
| <img border="0" src="images/overview-samples.png" width="298" height="422"></p> |
| <p align="left"> |
| <font color="#800000">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.</font></p> |
| <h2>Eclipse Automation</h2> |
| <p>Eclipse Automation has two main aspects: tracking and playback. Tracking user |
| activity can be used for various purposes such as monitoring user actions, |
| recording these actions for further analysis, recording commands into groups |
| (macros) etc. The flip side is the process of affecting the workbench behavior |
| by playing these commands back, typically by executing a script. Although the |
| two processes are interrelated, the one does not necessarily require the other. |
| For example, although command sequences can be recorded and played back later, |
| the sequence of commands can also be hand-crafted. Similarly, sequence of |
| commands can be converted into an activity report without any further desire to |
| feed it back into the workbench.</p> |
| <p>The area of application automation is wide and there are many approaches |
| depending on the task (macro recording/playback, scripting, usage analysis, |
| automated GUI testing). The goal of Eclipse Automation is not to provide a |
| complete solution for all these approaches. Instead, it is limited to enabling |
| Eclipse platform to expose itself to all kinds of automation approaches that can |
| be contributed by the applications building on top of the platform.</p> |
| <p><font color="#800000">Eclipse Automation is currently in the design stage. |
| Watch User Assistance home page for design documents in the near future.</font></p> |
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