Moving between Help Topics

Help Pop-up Menu

In a general help window, you can also use the Help pop-up menu as a shortcut. The pop-up menu includes both Backtrack and Home Topic, which are frequently used commands.

Quick help windows do not have a pop-up menu.

To Display the Help Pop-up Menu

Figure 3-7 Help pop-up menu

Knowing Where You Are

Each application that provides online help has a help volume. A volume consists of a group of help topics that describe the application and explain how to use its features. For instance, an application could organize its help using these main topics: Concepts, Tasks and Reference.

Figure 3-8 Help volume organizationThe home topic is the first topic, or beginning of the help volume. Main level topics are accessible from the home topic, or may also be listed in your application's Help menu.

Browsing between Different Help Volumes

Frequently hyperlinks take you to another topic in your application's help volume. While browsing the Tasks topics, for example, you might select a hyperlink to a topic in the Reference section.

A group of related applications, however, may use hyperlinks to cross-reference information in different help volumes. For example, an application could include a hyperlink to the desktop's introductory help volume that explains basic mouse and keyboard skills.

Because hyperlinks can quickly take you from one piece of information to another, you may need to know where you are. A quick look at your help window can give you the information you need.

• The line located below the menu bar reports the name of the volume you are viewing. This is helpful when you have explored several help volumes using Help Manager, the help index, or cross-volume links.

• Within the topic tree, the first item is the home topic, or the beginning of the help volume. After exploring topics, you can easily return to the home topic by scrolling to the top of the topic tree. Or, you can choose Home Topic from the Navigate menu or pop-up menu.

• An [ogon] (arrow) points to the title of the current topic. As you choose topics, the arrow moves to identify your selection. Scrolling the topic tree shows you where you are located relative to other topics.

Knowing Where You've Been

A general help window keeps track of the topics that you have visited. The History command opens a dialog box that lists the help volumes and help topics you have visited.

Figure 3-9 History dialog box