Re: [platform-help-dev] Launching infocenter to a particular URL

["Steve Woolley" <SWOOLLEY@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Dorian et al,

Our service teams have a requirement to e-mail a URL/describe a unique ID -
that points to a particular topic in an information Web - to users of our
products.  There are a few problems with the solution you detailed in your
reply to Kari:

1)  It places a requirement on the service guy to know the ID of the doc
plug-in containing the topic they want to refer to (not so difficult to
overcome since right clicking and choosing "Properties" in IE gives you the
fully qualified URL, plug-in ID, path, and filename of the target topic).

2)  It requires the service guy to remember the correct syntax (
http://server:8080/help?topic=/pluginId/path_to_file.html) for getting to
that topic (which is not the most intuitive of URLs to remember).

3)  The method of calling a topic via a URL will only work in an
information center scenario - what about integrated/standalone help
scenarios?


I would like to propose two solutions to these problems (one for the
information center scenario, and one for the integrated/standalone help
scenario).


Solution 1 - Information Center Scenario
=================================

Currently, when you right click on a topic in Internet Explorer, the
Address (URL) field of the General Properties dialog displays:

http://doc_server.ibm.com:8080/help/content/help:/com.ibm.myplugin.doc/installing.html

Which - as Kari pointed out - only displays that topic (without any
navigation, searchbar, or toolbar) if you copy and paste it into your
browser.

It would be great if the Address (URL) field of the General Properties
dialog (when you right-click on the topic in IE) contained the correct
syntax for getting to the target topic (including the other frames), for
example:

http://doc_server.ibm.com:8080/help?topic=/com.ibm.myplugin.doc/installing.html

Do you have any control over the information that gets populated in the
Address (URL)  field?

If the Web client is running on a UNIX platform, the user would choose
"View Frame Info" after right-clicking on the topic in question, and copy
the URL of the topic from the "Location" field in Netscape.

The only limitation I see with this solution is that the service guy would
have to copy and paste the topic location from an **externally** visible
application server for the customer to get any benefit out of the link.


Solution 2 - Integrated/Standalone Help Scenario
===============================================

Earlier this month, Jeanette Deupree asked about adding meta information,
or other tagging, to an HTML file to add alternative keywords to a topic:

"Is there any way to add meta information or other tagging to an HTML file
to add alternative search keywords to a topic? There are several ways to
refer to one concept in our product and we want to be able to put
alternative search keywords in a file without them showing up in the text."

Our team also investigated this possibility with a view to assigning a
unique - but invisible - topic ID as meta information to every topic in our
Web.  The idea being that users could be given the topic ID by our service
guys, the user searches for the unique topic ID, and hey presto, the topic
they were looking for appears at the top of their search results with 100%
score.

It would be nice if we could contain this kind of information invisibly in
our topics.


I look forward to hearing your thoughts on these two solutions.

Best wishes,


Steve
_______________________________________________________________________________


Stephen Woolley - User Assistance Architect
WebSphere MQ Integrator User Technologies
Mail Point 095, IBM United Kingdom Laboratories, Hursley Park,
Winchester, Hampshire, SO21 2JN, United Kingdom
Steve Woolley/UK/IBM@IBMGB             swoolley@xxxxxxxxxx
Tel/Fax:  +44 (0)1962 818428                   Internal:  248428


Yes, but things could change, so don't count on this as being an "API".

http://server:8080/help?topic=/pluginId/path_to_file.html

-Dorian


Hi. I figured out how to open an infocenter to a particular topic (with
http://<server>:8080/help/content/help:/<path>/<file>.html), but what comes
up is just the topic itself, no navigation or search or any of the other
frames. Is there a special kind of URL you can call to get a specific topic
PLUS the other useful frames?

Kari.

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