Search within Help Pages

OpenOffice.org Help 2.0

Document - ID	Specification Owner	Last Change	Status
	Hans-Peter Burow	12/17/03	final
Conforms to	
Applies to	Help, User Interface in general
Task ID(s)	92087
Category	Feature

Abstract

We have to enable the search within help pages. Here we need a simpler dialog as the “Find & Replace”-dialog.

i-Team Members (The specification Owner is part of the i-Team)

	Name	E-mail Address
User Experience	Christian Jansen (CJ)	cj@openoffice.org
Development	Hans-Peter Burow (PB)	pb@openoffice.org
Quality Assurance	Hasan Ilter (HI)	hi@openoffice.org
Documentation	Uwe Fischer (UFI)	ufi@openoffice.org
		Mail to i-Team

Approved for Implementation

	Approved by	Date
User Experience	Christian Jansen (CJ)	02/17/04
Development	Hans-Peter Burow (PB)	02/17/04
Quality Assurance	Hasan Ilter (HI)	02/17/04
Documentation	Uwe Fischer (UFI)	02/17/04
String Review	Elizabeth Matthis (EM)	02/18/04

Document Change History

Rev. Level	Change	Initials	Date
1.0	Initial version	PB	12/17/03
1.1	Changes of CJ and UFI included	PB	01/26/04
1.2	First string list review of EM	PB	02/12/04
1.3	String list review of EM the 2nd	PB	02/16/04
1.4	ToolBar button added	PB	02/17/04
Final	Get all approvals	PB	02/18/04

Contents

Glossary	1

1	Motivation	1

2	User Scenarios	1

3	Goals	1

4	Requirements and Dependencies	1

4.1	Requirements	1

4.2	Technical Dependencies	1

5	Competitive Analyses	2

5.1	Mozilla	2

5.2	Microsoft Help	2

5.3	StarOffice 7	3

6	Detailed Specification	4

6.1	Toolbar	4

6.2	Contextmenu	4

6.3	Dialog	5

6.4	Extras	6

6.5	Error Conditions	7

7	Future Tasks	7

8	Notes	7

9	References	7

Glossary

Term	Description
<Term 1>	

Motivation

The help system should have the possibility to search within the current opened help page. Other applications like Mozilla offer this functionality.

User Scenarios

The user opens the help window, then opens a help page. Now she/he wants to search for a specific word with this page. OpenOffice.org hasn't got this feature. A workaround is to use the search page of the index panel. This workaround search will highlight all the words that conform to the search text as a multi selection. This has the advantage that the user needs no additional clicks to see all the found words.

Goals

The goal is to offer search within help pages to the users.

Requirements and Dependencies

Requirements

We need a simpler search dialog than the “Find & Replace”-dialog for this feature.

Technical Dependencies

The code of the help window is located in the project SFX2. I think we can need this new simple search dialog in other parts of OpenOffice.org. So a good place to implement this dialog will be the project SVTOOLS.

Competitive Analyses

Mozilla

The search dialog of Mozilla Help:

You open this dialog with the key shortcut <STRG><F>.

Illustration 1Search dialog of Mozilla Help

And its alert box:

Illustration 2Alert box of search dialog of Mozilla Help

Microsoft Help

The search dialog of WordPad Help:

You open this dialog with the key shortcut <STRG><F>.

Illustration 3Search dialog of Microsoft Help

And the alert box of WordPad Help:

Illustration 4Alert box of the search dialog of Microsoft Help

The search dialog of Microsoft Word 2003:

Illustration 5Search dialog of Microsoft Word 2003

StarOffice 7

The alert box of the “Find & Replace”-dialog of StarOffice 7:

Illustration 6Alert box of the "Find & Replace"-dialog of StarOffice 7

Detailed Specification

Toolbar

We insert an additional button to the toolbar.

Illustration 7The new toolbar button

Contextmenu

We need a new contextmenu entry:

Illustration 8The new contextmenu entry

String list
Item	English	German	Comment
Menu entry	Find ~on this page...	Auf dieser Seite ~suchen...	

Dialog

Our new dialog.

The edit for the search string is a combobox, because the dialog saves the last ten search strings. It also saves its last position.

Illustration 9Our new dialog

String list
Item	English	German	Comment
Dialog	Find on this Page	Auf dieser Seite suchen	EM: The preposition “in” used by Mozilla is incorrect because the conceptual model of a “page” is a flat surface (not a container of HTML code, which must be where the “in” originated)
Fixed text	~Search for	S~uchen nach	This is the same text used in SO search dialog under Edit – Find & Replace
CheckBox	~Whole words only	Nur ganze ~Wörter	
CheckBox	~Match case	E~xakte Suche	
CheckBox	Wrap ~around	Suche am ~Dokumentanfang fortsetzen	If the backwards check box isn't checked; Translators: use the translation used in your language in Mozilla browser Search dialog only if it means both directions like “wrap” in English. Otherwise, translate this string to mean “Continue search at the start of the document”
CheckBox	Wrap ~around	Suche am ~Dokumentende fortsetzen	If the backwards check box is checked; Translators: use the translation used in your language in Mozilla browser Search dialog only if it means both directions like “wrap” in English. Otherwise, translate this string to mean “Continue search at the end of the document”
CheckBox	~Backwards	~Rückwärts	
Button	~Find	~Suchen	
Button	~Close	S~chließen	

The german (and other languages?) text of the “Wrap around” check box changes depending on whether the “Backwards” check box is marked (see string list and illustrations), because we have no accurate translation of “Wrap around” into german. So we have to consider here the search direction.

Illustration 10Text of "Wrap around" box, if "Backwards" box isn't checked

Illustration 11Text of "Wrap around" box, if "Backwards" box is checked

Extras

The Find button is only enabled if there is a valid (not empty) search text.

The text of the Find button doesn't change to “Find next” when the first occurrence of the search text was found.

The user is responsible to move the search dialog to a good position. It won't be positioned automatically.

The Help page will be scrolled to the found text.

Tab Order

The edit field has the initial focus. The tab order runs from this edit field over the checkboxes to the pushbuttons. If the user highlights text in the Help page, the search text box will initially be filled with that text. This would easily enable to search the next occurrence of that text.

Key Board Shortcuts

You can start the dialog in an English version with <STRG><F>. For other languages it must be localized.

The key board shortcuts are listed in the string list of the dialog.

Error Conditions

An error is when nothing is found.

Illustration 12Alert box when the text was not found

String List
Item	English	German	Comment
Info string	The text you entered was not found.	Der eingegebene Text wurde nicht gefunden.	

Future Tasks

None.

Notes

None.

References

None.

Search within Help Pages

Page 6

http://specs.openoffice.org/appwide/help/search_in_help.sxw

Search within Help Pages

Hans-Peter Burow

2003-11-21T12:19:55