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:
-
- 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.
-
- If available: the Index button displays the applications
index document. If the application didn't specify an index file, the
button is not sensitive.
-
- 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).
-
- If there are documents in the history, the Back button's
action moves back to the last visitied document.
-
- If the helpwindow has a vertical scrollbar: the Up button
scrolls up the helpwindow by one page.
-
- 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:
Libhelp version 1.8.1 (Jun 28. 95).
Thomas Harrer