Re: WEB APPLICATION: help tool for pop-ups and such

[SusanH -at- cardsetc -dot- com -dot- au]

J.C. Morel wrote
<<We want to be able to create cross-browser html help, context sensitive
help
and popups like What's This.>>

I, and I daresay many others have the same aspirations!.

There are some good ideas on implementing pop-up windows (well,
pseudo-pop-ups!) at the following web site.
     http://www.ancient.mq.edu.au/boomerang/teaching.www/java/popups.htm

I am looking at the option of having a small "question mark graphic" beside
each form label to implement a pop-up Help window that disappears when the
pop-up loses the focus (the onBlur example of the web page). I will be
generating the cross-browser Help with TOC, Index and full text search in
HDK.

I hope J.C. and anyone else who has inspired ideas in that area will share
their solutions. A browser-based application (that is browser-based to be
cross-platform) provides only a subset of the UI and user assistance
functionality that we have experienced in Windows applications.

For me, there are two burning issues: I don't want to lose the easy
integration with the application (through the application context IDs) and
I don't want to lose the information layering options that I had with
field-level and task-level context-sensitive Help, combined with a
browsable hypertext reference.

I can't believe this is progress for the end user. However, since we have
seen glimpses of the promised land,  we know, like J.C., what we must try
to deliver to our information users.

Susan Harkus