Local Help Viewer 1.1
The Local Help Viewer is an application for presenting locally installed help content. It contains features for browsing local help content, searching for keywords and strings, and saving favorite help topics for future reference. The following sections explain how to launch the Local Help Viewer and provide an overview of its features.
Launching Local Help Viewer
The Local Help Viewer is launched by the host application, either by selecting View Help from the Help menu, or by selecting F1 from the host application (for example, from Visual Studio 2010). This will launch the Local Help Viewer when the current help setting is local. For information about setting the help preference, see Help Library Manager.
Menu Bar
You can access the following common functions from the buttons on the menu bar:
Forward and back buttons – Let you navigate through content you have viewed during the Local Help Viewer session.
Sync to TOC – Highlights the current topic in the table of contents (Content pane) so you can explore surrounding content.
Search (text box and button) – Searches local content for the query you enter in the text box, and presents the results in the Results pane.
Manage Local Content – Launches Help Library Manager so you can install, remove, or update local content, or change your help preferences.
Add to Favorites – Adds the current topic to the favorites list.
Find – Finds a string within the current topic.
Print – Prints the current topic.
Options – For the current topic, sets the font size, the number of items to store in history, and whether to display the content on the left or right side of the help window.
Navigation Pane
The navigation pane provides different ways to locate topics within the content set. The tabs at the bottom of the pane let you view table of contents, index keywords, favorites, history, and search results. By default, the navigation pane appears on the left side of the help window, but you can switch it to the right side by using the Options button on the menu bar.
Contents tab – Displays a table of contents (TOC) view of local content for the current product. Each title in the TOC links to the corresponding topic.
Index tab – Displays a list of keywords and lets you search the local content for topics associated with a specific keyword that you enter in a text box.
Favorites tab – Provides Favorites and History lists. Favorites consist of topics that you have saved for later reference. The History list lets you peruse topics that you have recently viewed. You can also create folders for grouping favorite topics, and move topics between folders.
Results tab – Presents the results of searching local content for the query you entered in the search box on the menu bar.
Content Pane
The content pane displays the topic you selected from the table of contents, search results, keyword index, or other lists available in the navigation pane, or the content you opened by using a link or F1 search. By default, the content pane appears on the right side of the help window, but you can switch it to the left side by using the Options button on the menu bar. The content pane provides the following viewing options:
You can view topics in new tabs. Right-click a topic from the navigation pane (from the Contents, Index, Favorites, or Results tab) and click Open in new tab.
You can right-click in the content pane to access options for navigating between topics, printing, adding the current topic to favorites, viewing the source file, changing topic properties, and changing the default text size.