Recipe 2.17 Customizing Help

2.17.1 Problem

You're browsing the Eclipse help system, and some of the help pages are very long. You want to search the text in those pages, but you notice that the Eclipse help browser doesn't let you search the current page.

2.17.2 Solution

Use your own browser instead.

2.17.3 Discussion

Eclipse uses a custom version of the Tomcat web server to display help documentation. While the help system is open, you can find the direct URL of the help topic you're looking at. After launching your own browser, you can navigate to that URL.

To get the URL of a help topic, right-click the topic, and select Create Shortcut, which creates a shortcut to the help topic. For example, my URL for help on bookmarks is http://127.0.0.1:1203/help/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclipse.platform.doc.user/concepts/cbookmrk.htm. You can double-click the shortcut or enter the URL in a browser to view the help page in your browser, as shown in Figure 2-16. You're free to search individual Eclipse help pages with your browser's Edit menu.

Figure 2-16. Opening Eclipse help in your own browser

A recent addition to Eclipse enables you to bookmark help topics in the Eclipse help system. To create a bookmark, click the Bookmark Document button on the toolbar, and the bookmark will appear in the Bookmarks tab. Just double-click a bookmark to go back to the help topic indicated.

You can even customize the Eclipse help system to use your favorite browser by default. Just select the browser option you want in the Window Preferences Help page, as shown in Figure 2-17.

Figure 2-17. Configuring the help browser

You say you don't want to wait for the help system to open? What you're actually waiting for is the Tomcat web server to start so that it can serve help documents to the Eclipse Help browser. If you just want to check whether some topics match what you're looking for, click the Search button in the Eclipse toolbar and the Help Search button in the Search dialog. Enter the text you want help on, and click Search. The Search view then appears with matches in the help system. Here, you can see if your search returned any interesting matches to your query, all without having to launch Tomcat. However, if you see a match you're interested in, the help browser has to start up for you to view the topic's contents.