Closed Bug 10810 Opened 25 years ago Closed 24 years ago

RFE: Wire Help buttons to point to online or local HTML doc

Categories

(CCK Graveyard :: CCK-Wizard, defect, P3)

x86
Windows 95
defect

Tracking

(Not tracked)

VERIFIED FIXED

People

(Reporter: robinf, Assigned: vparthas)

References

Details

(Whiteboard: [Candidacy Approved] 3 hours)

Enhancement request:

I'd like to find out if it's possible to wire the CCK Wizard help buttons as
follows:

Help button in a wizard screen: points to HTML file (top of file)
Help button in Show Example screen: points to target within an HTML file

Doing this would solve the current problem that our help windows are modal (see
Bug 5434) and that I can't show any pictures or use any text formatting for the
help. If we can point to an HTML file, then users can keep the instructions on
the screen while they work on creating their customized files. This would also
hopefully get more people to "discover" the online doc (we found in previous
CCK's that users weren't aware of the online doc)

We would have to require that Navigator is installed in order to be able to
launch the doc. Is this a reasonable requirement?
If the online help documents are going to be in HTML, then this is okay.  If the
end user does not have a browser open, can we detect it and tell them to launch
their default browser to view the online help docs.
Severity: normal → enhancement
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Target Milestone: M15
This is currently just an idea.  Let's look at this again after the end of M9.
Assignee: selmer → varada
Status: ASSIGNED → NEW
Reassigning to Varada for investigation. Here's what I'm proposing:

User presses Help button in wizard screen: browser window opens and points to
top of HTML file, which I'll provide. (Top of HTML file contains links to the
file's contents, so user can click a link to go to the topic that interests
them.)

User presses Help button in Show Example screen: browser window opens and points
to specific target location (which I'll provide) within the HTML file.

This will require that the browser has been installed. To display the help
file, can we automatically launch the browser if it's not open or will the user
have to first launch the browser in order to make this work? Ideally I'd like us
to be able to launch the browser automatically if it's not already up.
When we launch the browser, we should always open a new browser window in which
to display the help. Thanks.
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Blocks: 17110
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 25 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
fixed- There is a new Help = Online;<url> in the local vars section of the ini
files. if you should choose to have online help for that page - change the help
to that format and it will launch a new browser page with that url. if you
should choose to retain the offline help with the wizard - just dont enter the
online help line.
 Similarly in the case of the Show example buttons for eg string.ini just go to
the help section and change it from the existing Help=foo.txt to
Help=Online;<foourl> and it will do the same.
I have checked in one example each - Checklist.ini and string.ini in the second
page. In case you need to have the same help page for one particular top level
node - then just change the help button in the top level ini file- it will be
reflected to the lower levels.
Status: RESOLVED → REOPENED
Re opening this...

Latest CCK build dated: 10-28-99

Changing the [Navigation Controls] Help= to point at an URL doesn't work.

1-Open branding_page1.ini and change the help= key to point at
http://www.yahoo.com.
2-Save the file then launch CCK
3-Go to the Customizing browser part one and select Help.

Results:

Unable to open file error dialog appears.
Resolution: FIXED → ---
Assignee: varada → robinf
Status: REOPENED → NEW
Hi robin - I have the online html help working - you have to decide the html
pages and the locations. please let me know if you need any help in
understanding the help feature
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
accepting. Thanks Varada!
Assignee: robinf → varada
Status: ASSIGNED → NEW
Reassigning to Varada.

I re-tested the Help=Online;http://www.yahoo.com on Branding_page1.ini and it is
not working. The unable to open file error dialog appears.  This Help=Online;URL
functionality should be enabled on all pages of CCK, not just the Welcome
screen.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 25 years ago25 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Brent as I had mentioned earlier in this same bug - please use the "local
variables" section to enter the Help=Online;www.yahoo.com-
the NavControls section is NOT the right one.
Marking this Verified Fixed.
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
Reopening bug and changing Summary to reflect that we also want to be 
able to display a local HTML file. (Currently we only have support to display an 
online HTML file.)

I plan to deliver the help as a set of locally-installed html files. Otherwise, 
we must require that CCK users are online in order to view the help.
Status: VERIFIED → REOPENED
Resolution: FIXED → ---
Summary: RFE: Wire Help buttons to point to online HTML doc → RFE: Wire Help buttons to point to online or local HTML doc
Severity: enhancement → normal
Status: REOPENED → ASSIGNED
Whiteboard: [Candidacy Approved] 3 hours
I have created a set of 22 html files to be used for the help. I won't check 
these files in until this bug is fixed (hopefully in time for Beta 1).

As a fallback, if this bug does not get fixed before Beta 1, I'll update all the 
help links to point to the CCK Feedback Center page (need URL from Bijal). 
(Currently the help links point to the mozilla.org CCK page.)
Marking fixed.
Currently the help section in each page states something like this
[Local Variables]
Help=Online;http://www.mozilla.org/projects/cck 
this points to an online file - you can continue using the same online file to 
have both local as well as online files. If you are using local files just 
specify the whole path and in case of CCK help or docs you can use the %Root% to 
specify a relative path. Since CCKHelp is a direct subfolder under CCKTool ( 
which is the root directory) you just have to say

Help=Online;%Root%CCKHelp\Help1.htm 

Just remember you have to change the Help variable in the [Local Variable] 
Section 

Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 25 years ago24 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Brent,

To verify this bug, here's the list of inifiles and their corresponding help 
files. The help files are located in cck\CCKTool\CCKHelp. (should be in Thursday 
3/30 build)

checklist.ini --> checklist.html
info.ini  --> info.html
autorun.ini  --> autorun.html
string.ini  --> string.html
branding_page1.ini  --> brandingpage1.html
button.ini  --> button.html
coname.ini  --> coname.html
customize_page1.ini  --> customizepage1.html
home.ini  --> home.html
bkmk.ini  --> bkmk.html
help.ini  --> help.html
customize_page 3.ini  --> customizepage3.html
start.ini  --> start.html
readme.ini --> readme.html
branding_page2.ini  --> brandingpage2.html
shell1.ini  --> shell1.html
shell2.ini  --> shell2.html
shell4.ini  --> shell4.html
branding_page4.ini  --> brandingpage4.html
splash.ini  --> splash.html
inst.ini  --> inst.html
build_page1.ini  --> buildpage1.html
Marking this Verified Fixed.  Looks Great.
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
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