XPages Help Application is an application for managing online Help, a video is available on Intec's YouTube channel. It is roughly based on the Notes/Domino Help, Eclipse Help and iNotes Help. It provides functionality for navigating the help by: Contents: a hierarchical multi-level navigation. Index: like the index of a book, allowing entries to be listed under one or more index categories. Search: a full-text search of the content. Bookmarks: allows users to add or remove bookmarks to their personal profile. This is only available for logged-on users.
The application is designed to work on Domino 8.5.2+ with the XPages Extension Library. The extensions used include Dojo Border Container, Dynamic Content and Value Picker. The system also demonstrates using themes and managed beans. Content is entered using the CKEditor with a customised toolbar.
The latest release includes the dijit.Tree control for all navigation, to produce a cleaner user experience. Future enhancements I have considered are:
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Navigation forwards and backwards through entries you've read, like iNotes.
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Navigation via a tag cloud (there is the facility to enter tags already, in anticipation of this).
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More refined author/ reader access, to allow a single XPages Help Application to hold all your company's online help, while showing information only for the apps they have access to. Administrators would only have access to update their own applications.
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A specific custom control to drop into your applications, to allow users to launch the online help from this application in a sidebar.
Please let me know of any issues encountered, either here or on Twitter (PaulSWithers) or by email (pwithers@intec.co.uk). If you use the application and like it, please add a review or mention it on Twitter.