Selecting a Help System Interface

By default, the IDL help system uses the Help View Interface to display help topics, except on Solaris and some Linux systems, where only the Help Browser Interface is available.

To Select the Help Browser Interface

  1. Open the Help preferences page:
    help_prefs.gif
  2. Select In an infopop under Open window context help.

To Configure a Web Browser

On Windows and some Linux systems, you can choose whether to use the internal help browser or an external web browser for the Help Browser interface. (On Macintosh, Solaris, and some Linux systems, an external web browser is always used.)

The internal help browser is a web browser interface streamlined for use as a help browser. On Windows systems, it uses Internet Explorer display engine to display content in the content pane. On Linux systems it uses a variant of the Mozilla browser display engine to display content in the content pane. The internal browser is selected by default on systems where it is available.

To configure the help system to use an external web browser:

  1. Select Use external browser on the Help preferences page.
  2. Open the General → Web Browser preferences page:
    help_web_browser.gif
  3. Click Use external Web browser.
  4. Choose a browser from the list, or use the Search button to locate other browsers. The Default system web browser option will use your system settings to select the browser used to open HTML files by default, if such a setting exists.

To Select the Help View Interface

On systems that support the Help View interface, it is selected by default. If you have previously selected the Help Browser interface and want to switch back:

  1. Open the General → Help preferences page.
  2. Select in a dynamic help view under Open window context help.
    help_prefs_view.gif

    3. Note
    On Solaris systems, the Help Browser interface is always used, even if in a dynamic help view is selected.