Libhelp Buttons

The libhelp browser has a button bar attached to the help window. If activated, the buttons invoke actions for displaying special help documents or for examination of help files. For your (and your visitors) impression we placed small fancy pictures on top of the buttons :-). They change their shade (for your pleasure) if armed.

Buttons and their actions:

dismiss
The Dismiss button unmaps the help window but does not kill it; history entries still remain. The next request for help just pops up the help browser which will display the requested help document.
index
If available: the Index button displays the applications index document. If the application didn't specify an index file, the button is not sensitive.
history
The History button displays the list of visited help documents. The user can click on a history line to change to the related help document. (Note: the icon is not international. Visit Germany to get the real understanding of this "reuse" icon).
back
If there are documents in the history, the Back button's action moves back to the last visitied document.
up
If the helpwindow has a vertical scrollbar: the Up button scrolls up the helpwindow by one page.
down
After reading about the Up button, can you imagine the action of the Down button?

The button's actions are bound to keys. But - the keybindings are only available if the help windows has keyboard focus.

Not all buttons are always available (or useful). For example if there is no more than one document in the history, the Back button is not needed and therefor not available. The Up and Down buttons are only sensitive if there is a (vertical) scrollbar attached to the help window. These buttons are insensitive and have their images and texts grayed out. Look at this picture of some insensitive buttons:

insensitive

-----------

Libhelp version 1.8.1 (Jun 28. 95).
Thomas Harrer