SUMMARY: solutions for popup help in web applications

["J.C. Morel" <jcmorel -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

Hello all,

Here is a summary of the answers to my question on cross-browser popup help 
for web applications.

QUESTION (snipped quite a bit):
<<We are currently trying to select a help authoring tool for our web 
application...<snipped>...We want to be able to create cross-browser html 
help, context sensitive help and popups like What's This
..<snipped>... We are looking for a tool that will allow us to create help 
that our users can also access directly in the application (browser) window 
when they need an explanation of a part of the web application. For example, 
by clicking or doing a 'mouseover' on a form or button in the web 
application, a pop-up type explanation would appear.>>

ANSWERS:

-------------------From Alice Kirk: <<A javascipt will handle this 
beautifully.  This is a great source for javascripts    
http://javascript.internet.com/toc.html  >>

-------------------From Corinne Backer who uses RoboHelp: <<As far as a 
secondary browser window ("This action would open a pop-up type explanation 
possibly with graphics such as equations or icons and so on. NOTE: We would 
prefer not to opt for the solution of having another page open in a new 
browser window with the explanatory information") I have the understanding 
that this is controlled by you or your web guys, whoever does the actual 
file setup. I had the same requirement, asked my developers, and they said 
they could do it either way, and that we could also control what the popup 
window looks like when it initially appears (size, available tool bars, 
placement onscreen, etc.) but that of course a devious user can fiddle with 
it. But most users don't.

-------------------From Susan Harkus: <<There are some good ideas on 
implementing pop-up windows (well, pseudo-pop-ups!) at the following web 
site. http://www.ancient.mq.edu.au/boomerang/teaching.www/java/popups.htm  I 
am looking at the option of having a small "question mark graphic" beside 
each form label to implement a pop-up Help window that disappears when the 
pop-up loses the focus (the onBlur example of the web page). I will be 
generating the cross-browser Help with TOC, Index and full text search in 
HDK....A browser-based application (that is browser-based to be 
cross-platform) provides only a subset of the UI and user assistance 
functionality that we have experienced in Windows applications.>>

-------------------From Ben Weisner:  <<You can also check out an article I 
wrote at http://www.htmlbasedhelp.com/howto/secondary/index.html for more 
information about launching secondary windows and pop-ups using Javascript 
and DHTML.>>


Hope this helps.

Josée Morel
SLP InfoWare
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