Tuesday October 09, 2007
Tuesday October 09, 2007
No More Need to Brand the Helpset Titlebar
A relatively frequent question when creating a helpset for an application on the NetBeans Platform is: "I am not creating an IDE. However, in the helpset's titlebar, I see the text 'IDE Help'. Aaaargh!" Okay, that's not really a question. However, that's normally the way in which this question is "asked". And then the answer is: "You need to brand the titlebar, as follows." And then a tricky little procedure is provided, involving an obscure XML file in an unlikely place in the NetBeans sources. To give an impression, here's the titlebar in question:
And here are some places, just in this blog (while there are other places elsewhere where this annoyance is discussed), where the problems caused by the above titlebar are discussed (and solutions are given, in the first case below):
- Removing "IDE Help" in the Title Bar of a JavaHelp Helpset
- Eclipse RCP vs. NetBeans Platform: A Developer's Insights
The NetBeans docs team recently discussed this situation. We came to the conclusion that the "value add" of this titlebar for the NetBeans user is not that great. Not having the "IDE" text in the titlebar would not be a big loss. But, since not having it would be a gain, at the very least one potential annoyance less, for NetBeans Platform developers, we decided to remove it. Hence, the titlebar of the helpset is now, since the last few days in 6.0 dev builds, as follows:
Small change, but a useful one, I think. You might still want to add text, or change text, in the helpset's titlebar. But now the chance that you will have to do so is significantly decreased.
Oct 09 2007, 10:07:47 AM PDT Permalink
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