Java Based Help - Suggestions

[John Scheffel]

I like the new Java based Help which allows searching but there are a few problems with it. It is often very slow to display the full page containing the search term, and the cursor does not change to an hourglass to indicate that it is busy. This combination often results in me trying to manipulate the window before it has finished updating, only to have it keep flashing and changing as the update continues. Working faster would be nice, but it shoud at least provide some indication that it is busy.

I also find that I sometimes prefer to access the Help the old way, both for speed and familiarity. It might be nice to have another button in the Help menus that will just open the main Help page in a browser the way it used to work. I can do this using the "Online Help" button in the Start menu for Modeling, but I haven't found an easy way to do it with the standard Drafting installation. I created a custom button to do it.

[Tom Bower]

Here are a couple more ideas:

- have a find Next/Prev button so when you've done a search for something, you can find (jump to) the next occurrence of it on a page

- make the HTML page display work more like a normal browser. For example, a mouse scroll wheel should work to scroll up & down the page; there should be standard right-click mouse menu options for copy, print, etc.

- improve the searching capability so you really can find things. Right now, certain characters seem to be ignored in searches and even when you know exactly what you're looking for it won't find it correctly. Perhaps an "advanced search" button would be nice.

- improve the robustness. I keep having to kill the thing and restart it. Perhaps it's related to John's excellent suggestion about indicating "busy" status and the thing is just off doing something, but it does seem to lock up a lot.

- remember window sizing from one invocation to the next.