Simple Help System

SimpleHelpSystem is a simple api I use to add html - help to some applications. This is a very simple thing that parses a directory, zip or jar-file for some html - files and transforms the directory structure into a tree structure. Looks like this:

Click to enlarge

The html-page <title> element is parsed and shown as a tree entry. If no title tag is present, the filename is shown. An index.html or index.htm file (if any) is used as entry for the directory entry. The other files are shown in alphabetical order.

The api's main entry point is the

de.herberlin.help system.SimpleHelpsystem

This class extends javax.swing.JFrame so it should be easy to set up the SimpleHelpsystem with other applications. With the conctructor you give the location of your helpfiles. For example:

JPanel panel=new SimpleHelpSystem("myhelp");

The help system searches for a subdirectory to current directory (System.property "user.dir"), if any parses it as help - root. If no directory exists, help system looks for a myhelp.zip and then for a myhelp.jar file to parse these archives for html - helpfiles.

For parsing the title tags may take a while it is recommendet to create help system after your application starts and hide it. You should not close the surrounding frame but just hide it to keep help system in memory.

To display a certain helppage, for example a page myhelp/support/contact.html call:

SimpleHelpSystem#display("/support/contact");

The key is the path to the corresponding file in the help system location without .html or .htm.

Limitations:

Help system does not work with JavaWebstart. I tried to make it work but did not succeed. I think the concept of parsing an existing directory of file at runtime is wrong for JavaWebstart.

Licence

This software is distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License. A copy of the licence is included with the sources. Copyright (c) 2001-2004 Hans Joachim Herbertz, www.herberlin.de, all rights reserved.

Version History:

Version 0.1
* Basic implementation.

Version 0.2
* - GUI Error handling.
* - UI Tests with jfcUnit
* - Open external links.
* - History for browsing.
* - Browser. Link target preview on hover.
* - Enable / disable copy link location

Version 0.3
* - Launcher build for BasicJava Workshop

Version 0.4
* - Load from jar and zip
* - init with name instead of File
* - Tests updated; ui tests removed