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 HP Help System Developer's Guide > Chapter 1 Introducing the HP Help System

Overview of Online Help
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It's virtually impossible -- and certainly impractical -- for anyone to learn and remember everything there is to know about the computer hardware and software they use to do their job. Nearly every computer user needs help at one time or another.

Online help, unlike a printed manual, has the power of the computer at its disposal. Most importantly, this power makes it possible to adapt the information to the user's current "context." Context-sensitive help provides just enough help to get the user back on task. Too much help can often be too much of an interruption or "context switch." In developing your online help, it's important to keep in mind the objectives for providing online help.

Objectives for Online Help

The two most important objectives for designing quality online help are:

  • First: Get the user back on task as quickly and successfully as possible.

  • Second: Educate the user to prevent future need for assistance.

How Users Get Help

Online help can be divided into three general categories:

  • Automatic Help -- The application determines when help is needed and what to present. This is sometimes called "system initiated" help.

  • Semi-Automatic Help -- The user decides when help is needed, but the system determines what to present. Semi-automatic help is initiated by a user's gesture or exclamation for help, such as pressing F1. The system's response is called "context-sensitive" help because it considers the user's current context in deciding what information to display.

  • Manual Help -- The user requests specific information, such as from a Help menu.

The Help Key.  Within most applications, the primary way for a user to request help is by pressing the help key. In recent years, the F1 function key has become a defacto standard "help key" for many workstation and personal computer products.

The OSF/Motif Style Guide recommends the use of F1 as the help key, and the OSF/Motif programmer's toolkit even provides some built-in behavior to make it easier to implement the help key in OSF/Motif applications.

Some computers have a Help key on the keyboard.

The Help Menu.  The Help menu is a common way to provide access to help information. OSF/Motif applications provide a Help menu, which is right-justified in the menu bar. The OSF/Motif Style Guide makes recommendations regarding the commands contained in a Help menu.

Help Buttons.  Many dialogs also provide a Help button to get help on the dialog. The OSF/Motif Style Guide recommends that choosing the Help button in a dialog be equivalent to pressing the help key while using that dialog. Exceptions should be made for complex dialogs, where help on individual controls within the dialog is appropriate.



Chapter 1 Introducing the HP Help System
  		 


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