Online Help

Hi all,

Wanted to let you know that since no objections were received
regarding replacing the old User's Guide with the new online help, we
are going ahead with installing the new online help.

You should be seeing the new docs soon. You can access the new online
help by going to the Help menu in the IDE's main window and choosing
Help > Contents > Netbeans - Help.

The online help files can be found in 

userguide/javahelp/org/netbeans/modules/userguide

Although this was the location of the old userguide, it now contains
the source files for the new online help. You can retrieve the source
documentation for the old 1.0 User's Guide from the source tree by
typing:

cvs checkout -D 2000-09-10 usersguide

at the command line.

Please let us know if you find any incorrect information or
typographic errors in the online help.

Some things of note about the online help:

- The Getting Started section has been moved into the helpset so you
won't see it as a separate Help menu item. You can get to the Getting
Started section from the Table of Contents pane in the helpviewer.

- The tutorial for NetBeans is being rewritten to make it current with
the IDE and to make the tutorial a progressive series of of tutorials
that will help users new to NetBeans become familiar with the basic
functionality of the IDE. The first tutorial will show you how to
create a radio button panel component and add it to the component
palette. Future tutorials will show you how to incorporate the
component in an application you will create, run, and debug. The tutorial
is not quite ready yet, it's under construction and we hope to have it
available very soon.

- We have yet to actually hook-up the new context sensitive help information,
so pressing F1 or the Help button won't provide you with information on 
an object in the IDE yet. We'll be hooking up the context sensitive help 
shortly.

- The online help has some new features: pop-up windows and secondary
windows that are launched when "live" text is clicked on. Highlighted
text without an underscore indicates "live" text. Clicking on the text
will produce either a pop-up window displaying a definition for the term
or a graphic or code sample that helps to illustrate the point of discussion.

- The Help information is structured to be task-oriented, that is, the
help is geared to instructing you on how to accomplish some task with
the IDE. We have some basic concepts and some reference
information. It would help us if you could tell us when a page doesn't
give you the information you thought you'd find or if you can't find
the information you want. In some cases, that missing information is on its
way, in other cases, we may have missed covering it. In any case, please give
us your input.

- A glossary is available from the Table of Contents and that glossary
will continue to grow. Contributions to the list of terms is most
welcome.

We look forward to hearing your comments and receiving your suggestions or
contributions to the help. 


--jo