Enhancement request: I'd like to find out if it's possible to wire the CCK Wizard help buttons as follows: Help button in a wizard screen: points to HTML file (top of file) Help button in Show Example screen: points to target within an HTML file Doing this would solve the current problem that our help windows are modal (see Bug 5434) and that I can't show any pictures or use any text formatting for the help. If we can point to an HTML file, then users can keep the instructions on the screen while they work on creating their customized files. This would also hopefully get more people to "discover" the online doc (we found in previous CCK's that users weren't aware of the online doc) We would have to require that Navigator is installed in order to be able to launch the doc. Is this a reasonable requirement?

If the online help documents are going to be in HTML, then this is okay. If the end user does not have a browser open, can we detect it and tell them to launch their default browser to view the online help docs.

This is currently just an idea. Let's look at this again after the end of M9.

Reassigning to Varada for investigation. Here's what I'm proposing: User presses Help button in wizard screen: browser window opens and points to top of HTML file, which I'll provide. (Top of HTML file contains links to the file's contents, so user can click a link to go to the topic that interests them.) User presses Help button in Show Example screen: browser window opens and points to specific target location (which I'll provide) within the HTML file. This will require that the browser has been installed. To display the help file, can we automatically launch the browser if it's not open or will the user have to first launch the browser in order to make this work? Ideally I'd like us to be able to launch the browser automatically if it's not already up.

When we launch the browser, we should always open a new browser window in which to display the help. Thanks.

fixed- There is a new Help = Online;<url> in the local vars section of the ini files. if you should choose to have online help for that page - change the help to that format and it will launch a new browser page with that url. if you should choose to retain the offline help with the wizard - just dont enter the online help line. Similarly in the case of the Show example buttons for eg string.ini just go to the help section and change it from the existing Help=foo.txt to Help=Online;<foourl> and it will do the same. I have checked in one example each - Checklist.ini and string.ini in the second page. In case you need to have the same help page for one particular top level node - then just change the help button in the top level ini file- it will be reflected to the lower levels.

Re opening this... Latest CCK build dated: 10-28-99 Changing the [Navigation Controls] Help= to point at an URL doesn't work. 1-Open branding_page1.ini and change the help= key to point at http://www.yahoo.com. 2-Save the file then launch CCK 3-Go to the Customizing browser part one and select Help. Results: Unable to open file error dialog appears.

Hi robin - I have the online html help working - you have to decide the html pages and the locations. please let me know if you need any help in understanding the help feature

accepting. Thanks Varada!

Reassigning to Varada. I re-tested the Help=Online;http://www.yahoo.com on Branding_page1.ini and it is not working. The unable to open file error dialog appears. This Help=Online;URL functionality should be enabled on all pages of CCK, not just the Welcome screen.

Brent as I had mentioned earlier in this same bug - please use the "local variables" section to enter the Help=Online;www.yahoo.com- the NavControls section is NOT the right one.

Marking this Verified Fixed.

Reopening bug and changing Summary to reflect that we also want to be able to display a local HTML file. (Currently we only have support to display an online HTML file.) I plan to deliver the help as a set of locally-installed html files. Otherwise, we must require that CCK users are online in order to view the help.

I have created a set of 22 html files to be used for the help. I won't check these files in until this bug is fixed (hopefully in time for Beta 1). As a fallback, if this bug does not get fixed before Beta 1, I'll update all the help links to point to the CCK Feedback Center page (need URL from Bijal). (Currently the help links point to the mozilla.org CCK page.)

Marking fixed. Currently the help section in each page states something like this [Local Variables] Help=Online;http://www.mozilla.org/projects/cck this points to an online file - you can continue using the same online file to have both local as well as online files. If you are using local files just specify the whole path and in case of CCK help or docs you can use the %Root% to specify a relative path. Since CCKHelp is a direct subfolder under CCKTool ( which is the root directory) you just have to say Help=Online;%Root%CCKHelp\Help1.htm Just remember you have to change the Help variable in the [Local Variable] Section

Brent, To verify this bug, here's the list of inifiles and their corresponding help files. The help files are located in cck\CCKTool\CCKHelp. (should be in Thursday 3/30 build) checklist.ini --> checklist.html info.ini --> info.html autorun.ini --> autorun.html string.ini --> string.html branding_page1.ini --> brandingpage1.html button.ini --> button.html coname.ini --> coname.html customize_page1.ini --> customizepage1.html home.ini --> home.html bkmk.ini --> bkmk.html help.ini --> help.html customize_page 3.ini --> customizepage3.html start.ini --> start.html readme.ini --> readme.html branding_page2.ini --> brandingpage2.html shell1.ini --> shell1.html shell2.ini --> shell2.html shell4.ini --> shell4.html branding_page4.ini --> brandingpage4.html splash.ini --> splash.html inst.ini --> inst.html build_page1.ini --> buildpage1.html

Marking this Verified Fixed. Looks Great.