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[platform-help-dev] Tooltip text in Contents view?

Hi folks,

The feature that displays the search results context in hover help/tooltip
text (when you hover the pointer over search results) is a useful addition
to the V2.1 Help system.  Currently, when you hover the pointer over a
topic in the navigation tree (Contents view), you only get a duplication of
the topic label attribute in the hover help.  Whilst this is useful when
the length of the topic label exceeds the width of the contents/navigation
frame, it offers little more value (although it may have accessibility
implications that I have overlooked?).  Is it possible to display an
abstract for each topic in the hover help in addition to the toc label
attribute?

The proposal for achieving this is as follows:

Topic abstracts or descriptions could be embedded as metadata within the
HTML:

<head>
.
.
.
<meta name="abstract" content="Learn the basics of caring for your new pet
bat." />
.
.
.
</head>

When the ToC is built, the help system parses the <meta name="abstract"
content="blah blah blah" /> string from the HTML file and populates the
tooltip text with this string instead of the toc label attribute string.

I would expect the see this tooltip rendered as:

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
|  Learn how to care for your new pet bat       |     <--------  derived
from <topic label="Learn how to care for your new pet bat" href
="batcare.html" />
|  Learn the basics of caring for your new pet bat.   |     <--------
derived from <meta name="abstract" content="Learn the basics of caring for
your new pet bat." />
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+

Topics not containing <meta name="abstract" /> will only display the toc
label attribute string in the hover help/tooltip text as implemented in
V2.1.

I suspect there will be a degradation in performance associated with
parsing the abstract from every topic in the ToC, but variations on this
approach may be possible.

Any thoughts?


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
Home Office:  (01962) 774812  /  +44 1962 774812




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