by Janice J. Heiss

Help is on the way! The industry has been anxiously awaiting JavaHelp^TM technology. Tool vendors are ready to provide help authoring support to make JavaHelp technology system development easy. Now developers and help authors have a complete help system and application programming interface that eliminates the need for non-standard or limited feature help systems. "JavaHelp technology eases online help development by providing an industry-developed 100% Pure Java^TM certified HTML-based help system for use with any application on any platform," states Nancy Lee, product manager for the JavaHelp software group at the Java Software division of Sun Microsystems.

JavaHelp 1.0 technology is an online help delivery system that provides functionality for accessing, navigating and searching an application's help information. The JavaHelp system features a table of contents, index, and search engine for easy navigation of help content. It also comes with a help documentation viewer that displays tips about the information through in-line glossaries or pop-up windows.

Based on the Java^TM Foundation Classes (JFC) software, JavaHelp technology is full-featured, both platform- and browser-independent, and extensible. It enables help authors and developers to incorporate online help in applets, components, applications, operating systems, and devices. It can be used for online documentation as well.

Developers can customize and extend the JavaHelp system to fit the style and requirements of their applications. For help authors, developing a JavaHelp system is made easy through a choice of tools that provide a user-friendly WYSIWYG development environment. Some of the authoring tools available from third-party tool vendors now on the market include Blue Sky, ForeFront, Quadralay, WexTech and others.

Maximum Strength Help for an Apps-Dense World

With software applications proliferating at lightning speed -- and managers and users striving to maximize the usability of their applications -- abundant, robust, online help is crucial. Even the best user interface may not reveal all the underlying functionality of an application. In response to this need, Sun has created the JavaHelp Application Programming Interface (API) and reference implementation. Through JavaHelp technology, developers and help authors can create online help for any software application.

State-of-the Art Help Saves Time and Money

In the past, developers of Java technology-based applets and applications had to build their own custom help systems from scratch, or use makeshift solutions. Custom development is costly and time-consuming as help systems require a high level of sophistication and ease-of-use. Substantial investment is difficult to justify since help systems are traditionally viewed as add-ons to the main application. Now, with JavaHelp technology, developers no longer have to build custom help systems for each platform they are developing on or use makeshift solutions such as plain HTML pages.

JavaHelp technology offers many advantages over other help systems or plain HTML pages including the following: Can run on any browser or platform Comes with its own HTML-based viewer Can be embedded within the application Offers better navigational aids Allows full text search Has state-of-the-art merging capabilities.

Snapshot of Features

JavaHelp technology is a robust help system designed to meet the needs of today's industrial-strength applications. It meets the requirements of 100% Pure Java certification, and it leverages many of the benefits inherent in the Java programming language. With JavaHelp technology, developers can write their help system once and run it on multiple applications or browsers on any platform -- the Solaris^TM operating environment, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, or even Linux.

JavaHelp technology also benefits from the web-friendly Java programming language. JavaHelp technology was designed from the ground up to run in a networked environment, whether it is an online help system that is shared by several web applications or a corporate employee manual accessible to all employees on a corporate intranet.

In addition, JavaHelp technology's capabilities extend far beyond Java technology-based help applets. The JavaHelp API provides capabilities to support the merging of multiple help systems. Based on the JFC software, JavaHelp technology's extensibility enables developers and help systems authors to add, combine, or replace JavaHelp technology components -- viewer, navigators, search engine, and toolbar -- to create a customized help system.

Helping Themselves -- Companies Customize JavaHelp^TM Technology

JavaHelp technology is customizable, providing authors and developers the needed flexibility to create the right help system to support an application. Authors can assemble the features they need, re-use a set of components, or delete a component from a construction set.

One company, Marimba, which provides management infrastructure for intranet, extranet, and Internet e-business applications, has taken the lead in customizing JavaHelp technology. Marimba currently has an HTML-based help system delivered with its own proprietary help engine. "While it reads HTML, it is actually an application written in the Java programming language, delivered as a Castanet channel," explains Craig Sherod, documentation manager at Marimba. "This gives us the advantage of being able to extend our help updates, transparently and efficiently, over any network connection to our customers."

Marimba plans to customize the JavaHelp technology engine into a Castanet channel. "I have promoted JavaHelp technology at Marimba because we have needed a more robust cross-platform solution. We see JavaHelp technology as a world-class help engine that responds to all the important infrastructure issues like full text search, indexing -- you name it."

JavaHelp 1.0 software can be downloaded at the JavaHelp web site, where the JavaHelp specification is also available. JavaHelp software supports both JDK^TM 1.1 software and the Java 2 platform. There is no licensing fee for JavaHelp technology software.

See Also:

JavaHelp^TM Technology Home
(http://java.sun.com/products/javahelp/)

Blue Sky Software
(http://www.blue-sky.com/)

ForeFront Inc.
(http://www.ff.com/)

Marimba
(http://www.marimba.com/)

Quadralay Corporation
(http://www.quadralay.com/)

WexTech Systems
(http://www.wextech.com/home.htm)