IBM R1 Chapter 4 Customizing Help

Chapter 4 Customizing Help

Every Help topic consists of four files, all of which are editable:

• The file that defines the layout of the graphical bar displayed at the top of every Help

window. Student and Course Administrator Help topics have slightly different headers.

• The file that defines the navigation bar containing a list of links at the left of every Help

window.

• The file containing the topic content. Topic content files are all named

<prefix>_<topic>_b.html, where <prefix> identifies the topic as being a Student or Course

Administrator Help topic. By convention, the prefix sh_ identifies a Student Help topic;

ch_ identifies a Course Administrator Help topic.

• The map file that defines the frameset in which the header, navigation bar, and topic

content are displayed. Map files are all named <prefix>_<topic>.html where

<prefix>_<topic> matches the <prefix>_<topic> of the corresponding content file.

All of these files reside in a single directory on a server. Student and Course Administrator Help

topics reside in separate subdirectories. Depending on how you configure the application after

installation, there may be copies of the Help system on multiple servers. Users of the Offline

Learning Client download (Student) Help to their workstations. If Help is installed on multiple

servers, you should make any changes on all of them. Users of the Offline Learning Client should

be advised to download a new version incorporating your changes.

Users access topics in the Help system in either of two ways:

• From the Student or Course Administrator Help table of contents or index.

• By clicking the ? icon on the current page. When the user clicks this icon, the application

displays the Help topic relevant to that page. This is known as context-sensitive Help.

The following sections look at the construction of a sample of a Help topic and describe the

various ways in which you can customize a Help window’s display attributes and content,

redirect context-sensitive Help, and add a new Help topic to the system.

The following example shows the component parts of the Help topic for the Student Preferences

dialog box.

The map file sh_preferences.html looks like this:

<html>

<head>

<title>IBM Lotus Learning Management System Student Help</title>

</head>

<frame name=header title="Help Header"

src="sh_help_header_h.html"scrolling=no framespacing=0 frameborder=no

border=0 marginwidth=0 marginheight=0 noresize>

<frame name=navigation title="Help Navigation"

src="sh_help_navigation_l.html" scrolling="auto" framespacing="0"

frameborder="No" border="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" noresize>

Chapter 4: Customizing Help 11