Using JBuilder's online help

JBuilder displays online help topics in the Help Viewer. Topics can also be displayed in the AppBrowser or in a web browser.

JBuilder's Help Viewer

Choose one of the following topics for detailed information about JBuilder's Help system:


How to get Help

There are several ways to get help on all topics:


The main parts of the Help Viewer

The JBuilder Help Viewer includes the following:


Using the Help Viewer

Choose one of the following topics for information on using the Help Viewer:

Using the Table of Contents

To choose a topic from the Table of Contents:
  1. Click the Contents tab in the top left of the Help Viewer.
  2. Double-click a book icon to expand the topics in that book.
  3. Click an item in the Table of Contents to view the topic in the content pane.

Using the Index

To look up a topic in the Index:

  1. Click the Index tab in the top left of the Help Viewer.
  2. Type the topic in the text field.
    As you start typing, the index scrolls, doing an incremental search on the index entries to find the closest match.
  3. Double-click the highlighted index topic or press Enter to view the content.
    If there is more than one topic for the selected index entry, the Index pane splits in two and displays a topic list in the lower portion of the pane. Click the topic you want to display.

Using full-text search (including Boolean search)

To find text in all books and use the Boolean search:
  1. Click the Find tab in the top left of the Help Viewer.

  2. Type the search words in the text field.
    As you type, the search scrolls to find the closest match.

    The Help Viewer supports the following Boolean search operations:
    (Do not use quotes in the text field.)
  3. Double-click the highlighted topic or press Enter to view the content.
    If there is more than one topic for the selected entry, the Find pane splits in two and displays a topic list in the lower portion of the pane. Click the topic you want to display.

Searching for text in the current topic

To find text in the current topic of the Help Viewer:
  1. Click the Find button  Find in the Help Viewer or press Ctrl + f.
  2. Type the search words in the Find Text in Current Topic dialog.
  3. Click Find Next or press Enter to continue the search.
  4. Click Cancel to close the dialog box.
  5. Press F3 to search again without opening the dialog box.

Copying text from the Help Viewer

To copy text from the Help Viewer:

  1. Select the text in the content pane.
  2. Select Edit|Copy from the Help Viewer main menu or press Ctrl + c.

Zooming in the Help Viewer

You can change the apparent size of the font and images in the Help Viewer by zooming in and out. This way you can examine images more closely, fit more text at once into the view window, or otherwise adjust the viewing size for your comfort. The zoom increments are small, so you can control the apparent size of the view precisely.

There are two ways to perform each type of zoom:

To zoom in:

To zoom out:

To return to normal view:

Using bookmarks

To add a bookmark for the current page in the Help Viewer, select Bookmarks|Add Bookmark from the main menu.

To edit bookmarks in the Help Viewer:

  1. Select Bookmarks|Edit Bookmarks from the main menu. The Bookmark Editor dialog box opens.
  2. Select the bookmark and click the option to remove, rearrange, or go to bookmark.
  3. Click Close.
To go to a bookmark, select Bookmarks and choose a bookmark from the list. The first ten bookmarks have mnemonics in the Bookmarks menu, so you want the most commonly used bookmarks at the top of the list. You are limited to 25 bookmarks on the menu, although you can edit the help.properties file to increase this number. The help.properties file is created the first time you exit the Help Viewer and is saved to the .jbuilder directory in your home directory.


Navigating in the Help Viewer

The following table describes how to move around in the Help Viewer:

To Do this... Keyboard shortcuts
Change books or go to a topic Click the topic title. Use the arrow keys.
Expand or collapse a section of the Table of Contents Click the icon beside a topic on the Contents page or double-click the topic. Select the book and press Enter to open.
You can also select the book and use the right arrow and left arrow keys to open and close the book.
Return to the previous topic in the history list Click the Back button Back.Ctrl+Left Arrow
Go to the next topic in the history list Click the Forward button Forward.Ctrl+Right Arrow
Go to the first topic in the history list Click the Home button Home.Ctrl+Home
Find (search for) text in the current topic Click the Find button Find.Ctrl+F
Search again     F3
Find (search for) text in all books Click the Find tab.    
Follow a hypertext link underlined in the text Click the link in the text.    

Using the keyboard for scrolling

When you select an entry in the Contents, Index or Find pages of the Help Viewer, the keyboard focus stays there. Navigation keys (such as PageDown) continue to scroll the left side of the Help Viewer rather than the content pane on the right side.

To shift focus to the content pane on the right side of the Help Viewer, press the Tab key. The Tab key cycles from the pane selected in the left side of the Help Viewer (Contents, Index, or Find) to the content pane and then to the navigation buttons. Press Shift+Tab to go back.


Viewing class reference documentation

You can view reference documentation for a class in the AppBrowser, the Help Viewer, or a web browser.

To display reference documentation in the AppBrowser, do one of the following:

In order for the class documentation to be found, the import statements at the top of your source file must point to the desired class or package. If the message Java Symbol Not Found is displayed, navigate to a source file that imports the desired class.

To display reference guides in the Help Viewer, do one of the following:

The layout of the reference documentation

Each reference entry in the Borland-generated reference documentation shows not only the methods and fields (variables) that are defined within that class or interface, but also lists the ones inherited by that class or interface. These lists of available methods and fields enable you to jump directly to the associated documentation.

The reference documentation page for a class, component, or interface has the following sections:

Looking up properties in the reference documentation

Simple properties are listed in the Properties section of each file in the reference documentation. A simple property is one where its write accessor ("setter"), if it has one, takes a single parameter and returns nothing. If it has a read accessor (prefaced with "get" or "is"), it takes no parameters and returns a value.

You can look up simple properties in the Help Viewer Index by either its full name or its "short" property name (without the "get", "set", or "is" prefix). For example, look for the border property of the BorderIcon component using any of the following index entries:

getBorder, ButtonIcon component
setBorder, ButtonIcon component
border,  ButtonIcon component

In many cases, methods exist that do not follow the rules for a simple property but which manipulate a property. Often, these additional methods supplement the functionality of corresponding simple properties. These are found in the Methods section in the class file, under the full method name where applicable. In the Help Viewer Index, these methods are included by their full names.