Help Page Reference

Related documents

• Page Reference
• Nav Reference

Table of Contents

• Introduction
  • Tips
• Exported identifiers
  • help
• help methods
  • addTopic()

Introduction

The Help page is a standard built-in popup page that displays help topics. When the Help page is initialized, it automatically gathers the help associated with each defined page by calling the page's renderHelp() method. In addition, pages can call the help.addTopic() method to add additional topics.

The help page supports active links to any help topic, including links within help topics. When a link to a help topic is clicked, a Help popup page instance is created that starts at the requested topic, though the user can then select any topic. If the user subsequently clicks a link within a help topic, a new popup instance of the Help page is created. The user will return to the old topic when the new page is dismissed.

Tips

The help page is also responsible for displaying page tips. These are small popup notices that provide a helpful hint that the user may not know. A tip may be displayed when a page is opened. A page may have several tips. Certain tips are displayed only the first time a page is opened. Others are displayed at some random time later, though the system is careful to not display them so often that it's annoying. Once a tip is displayed, it is not displayed again. However, all of a page's tips are always shown at the bottom of the page's help topic content.

The help page automatically gathers any page tips by reading the page's tipInfo property. The tips will be added to the bottom of the page's help topic.

Exported identifiers

help

Syntax

import {help} from 'common/mvcs/export.js';

The help object provides methods and properties to control the help system.

help methods

addTopic()

Syntax

help.addTopic(helpId, info)

Add a help topic. The helpId is an ID string for the help topic. The helpId is used as an option value when selecting the help topic. It should be unique for each topic. When the Help page gathers the help information from all pages, the helpId is the page ID. The info argument is an object containing the help topic information.

Parameters

• helpId
  A unique help topic ID string.
• info
  An object containing the following properties:
  • title (required)
    A title string for the help topic. The title will be displayed as a selectable item in the help topic list.
  • renderHelp (required)
    A function that returns the View template for the help topic content. It returns a Template object, a string, a number, a DOM node, a Component object, or an array containing a mix of these types. See the renderHelp() method.
  • tipInfo (optional)
    An object containing keys that each represent an ID for a tip. Each tip object contains the following properties:
    • id
      An ID string for this tip. The ID is used to record which tips have been displayed.
    • type
      A string indicating when the tip should be displayed. Tips are displayed as popup messages only once:
      • 'firstTime'
        Display the tip the first time the page is opened.
      • 'anyTime'
        Display the tip when the page is opened at a random time.
    • template
      A Template or string that contains the contents of the tip.
      The tipInfo will be ignored for help not associated with a page ID. The help page automatically gathers any page tips by reading the page's tipInfo property.