Would you like to optimize your chances of success when you search the RAD Studio online help? This article presents several easy ways to improve your access to online help by using the features of the RAD Studio help viewer (the Microsoft document explorer, Dexplore.exe.

The RAD Studio Help Viewer Window has two major panes. Here is the default window layout:

• The Index and Contents (TOC) pane is on the left-hand side.

  To switch between the Index and the Table of Contents, just click the Index or Contents tab at the bottom of the left-hand pane.

• The topic display and Search pane is on the right-hand side.

  To open the Search dialog and the search result display, click the Search tab at the top of the right-hand pane. The title of the current help topic, if a topic is displayed, appears on the tab of the display pane.

You can access the Search, Index and Contents features in two different places: by clicking the toolbar button or by clicking the tab of the pane in the help viewer. To close any of the tabbed panes, click the x in the upper right corner of the pane.

To reopen a pane, click Search, Index, or Contents in the Help menu or on the help viewer's toolbar:

    Basic Search, Copy, and Paste Work for Online Help

The Table of Contents provides an easy way to navigate the online help -- that is, if you are familiar with the structure of the Contents. You can use the Contents to browse through several libraries of help to find related topics.

The Contents is organized into three major libraries (Common, Win32, and Microsoft .NET) and the VCL library, as follows:

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SYNCHRONIZING WITH THE TABLE OF CONTENTS: When a help topic is displayed in the help viewer, just click the Sync with Table of Contents button in the toolbar. This button displays the Contents tab and places focus on the TOC entry that matches the current help topic. The Sync button shows you where the topic belongs in the TOC, and then you can explore closely related topics. You can also determine the context of a topic (Is this topic about Delphi, or is it about C++?). The Sync button is disabled when the current topic is not listed in the Table of Contents.

Many people are reluctant to use the Search mechanism in the help because Search can yield hundreds of topics. In some instances, however, the only way to find information is by using the Search, not by using the Index or Contents. And there are some very effective ways to narrow your search as well.

Although a net of 500 topics seems daunting, keep in mind that the first topics in the list are the strongest matches to your Search string. If you scan the first screen of topic titles, you can eliminate many of them without opening the topics, and open only the ones that have likely sounding titles. If you open a topic and wonder what general area it came from (is it from the Delphi Language Guide, the C++ Language Guide, the Dialog help, the VCL?), you can use the Sync with Table of Contents button to see where the topic lives in the contents.

WHAT THE SEARCH COMMAND DOES: The Search command searches every topic and can find exact text inside a topic. (To search for an exact string, place the string inside quotation marks, such as "Project Manager".) On the other hand, the Index and Contents are built from tags inside the help topics. For example, a help topic that mentions CodeGuard only once might not be indexed under CodeGuard. But if you do a Search on CodeGuard, that file would be listed in the results.

Similarly, in the VCL, some component members are not indexed individually, so looking through the Index for the name of a method, such as DoHint, might yield no success. But when you use Search to look for DoHint, the first result is the TCustomAction.DoHint Method, followed by a number of other related topics.

SORTING YOUR SEARCH RESULTS: Located above the search results are two fields that give you some control over the order of the results: Sort by and Sorted in ascending/descending order.

Use the Sort by field to specify that the results be arranged by:

• Rank (the strongest match is listed first)
• Source (results are listed alphabetically by source, such as Blackfish SQL or RAD Studio VCL Reference; click the associated Sorted in ascending/descending order to reverse the order)
• Contains code (topics that contain code examples are listed first)
• Title (results are listed alphabetically by title; click the associated Sorted in ascending/descending order to reverse the order)
• Locale (results are listed by locale; not supported in typical installations)

GENERAL STRATEGY: To get the best search results, start by consulting the Index, and then use Search if the Index does not lead you to the information you seek. Enter a string that will help narrow the search. For example,

SEARCHING THIRD PARTY HELP: As typically installed, RAD Studio online help contains the help for several third party products, such as Internet Direct (Indy) and the Windows Platform SDK. The help for these products is automatically integrated into the help Index and also appears as separate volumes in the Contents. by default, the Search command looks through several online Microsoft help volumes as well as RAD Studio help.

The Search command typically displays results that are from sources outside RAD Studio (such as the Microsoft Windows Platform SDK). With certain option settings, the help viewer might report a long list of external results followed by RAD Studio results. By adjusting help viewer options, you can give preference to either local help (RAD Studio help) or help from online sources, and you can completely eliminate external help from Search.

The two dialog boxes that enable you to control certain aspects of the Index and Search commands on the help viewer are described in the following paragraphs.

    Adjusting Your Search Using the Tools/Options Dialog Box

Use the Tools/Options/Help/Online dialog box to specify whether Search will include external sources or only RAD Studio help (local help):

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The following table summarizes the options that you can set on the Tools/Options/Help/Online dialog box:

Tools/Options/Help/Online Option Group	Settings	Description
When loading Help content	Try online first, then local	Places external (online) help sources first in Search results.
	Try local first, then online	Lists RAD Studio topics first in Search results. (Recommended setting.)
	Try local only, not online	Excludes external (online) help sources. Includes only RAD Studio help in Search results.
Search these providers:	Local Help MSDN Online Codezone Community Questions	These are the external (online) help volumes that you can specify be searched. None of the providers in the list are searched if you have selected Try local only, not online in the "When loading Help content" field. Use the Up/Down arrows to move the selected provider up or down in the list.
Codezone Community:	4GuysFromRolla.com AspAlliance.com C# Corner.com CodeGuru.com and so on	Lists external (online) domains that you can include in or exclude from your help searches. Note that if you select only Local Help in the Search these providers box, the Codezone Community list is ignored.

ELIMINATING THIRD PARTY HELP FROM YOUR SEARCHES: To see only CodeGear RAD Studio help in your Search results, and to eliminate all external (online) help sources, select Try local only, not online in the When loading Help content field on the Tools/Options/Help/Online dialog box

The filters available on the Index and Contents tabs serve to eliminate everything from the Index and Contents except for the subject matter indicated in the filter, as follows:

• (No Filter) -- Includes all RAD Studio help, third-party help (such as Internet Direct and Rave Reports), and MS Window Platform SDK, .NET Framework SDK (for 2007 products only), and Help on Help (help for the MS Document Explorer, Dexplore)
• .NET Compact Framework (available for 2007 products only) -- Includes the .NET Framework SDK; does not include any RAD Studio help
• .NET Framework (available for 2007 products only) -- Includes the .NET Framework SDK; does not include any RAD Studio help
• Blackfish SQL -- Includes only the Blackfish SQL Developer's Guide
• Language: C++ -- Includes the RAD Studio VCL Reference, the Dinkumware Standard C++ Library, and MS Windows Platform SDK (and for 2007 products only, the .NET Framework SDK); does not include any RAD Studio subject-matter topics (such as the Common and Win32 libraries)
• Language: Delphi -- Includes only the RAD Studio VCL; does not include any RAD Studio subject-matter topics (such as the Common and Win32 libraries)
• Microsoft Windows Platform SDK -- includes Microsoft Windows Platform SDK, and (for 2007 products only) the .NET Framework SDK; does not include any RAD Studio help
• RAD Studio - Includes all installed RAD Studio personalities (such as Delphi, C++Builder, and .NET)
• RAD Studio for Microsoft .NET (available for 2007 products only) -- Includes the Common library and the Microsoft .NET library of RAD Studio help, as well as the VCL Reference
• RAD Studio for Win32 Platform -- Includes the Common library and the Win32 library of RAD Studio help, as well as the VCL Reference
• RAD Studio, Dinkumware C++, Indy, Rave Reports -- Includes all of RAD Studio help, the Dinkumware Standard C++ Library, Internet Direct (Indy) and Rave Reports.

TIP: To include all of RAD Studio help, select the RAD Studio filter. This filter includes help for the VCL and all installed personalities, such as Delphi, C++Builder, and .NET.

NOTE: The filters on the Search dialog (Language, Technology, and Content Type) are similar to the filters on the Index/Contents pane. To set the Search filters so that your results include only RAD Studio help, use the following settings:

To select the commands and toolbars that will appear in the help viewer, click Tools/Customize:

On the Tools/Customize dialog box, you can specify and rearrange the commands that appear in the menus and toolbars of the help viewer, create new menus of your own, specify whether shortcuts are to appear (such as Ctrl+C for Copy), and create new shortcuts of your own.

    Rearranging the Help Window

    Adding Help Favorites

You can add your own Help Favorites tab to the help viewer. First, open the Help Favorites tab by clicking the Help Favorites button on the toolbar. Then, when a topic is displayed that you want to save, just right-click the help topic in the viewer, and select Add to Help Favorites from the context menu.

The Add to Help Favorites command does the following for you:

• Creates the Help Favorites tab if it is not yet present in the help viewer
• Adds the title of the current help topic to the Help Favorites tab, under the Help Topics node

When you click your Help Favorites tab, you go directly to the help topics that you have designated as your favorites.

HELP FAVORITES CONTEXT MENU COMMANDS: The Help Favorites page has a small set of commands for managing the contents of the page. The following four icons/commands are available on both the context menu and on the toolbar of the Help Favorites page:

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• Move Up
• Move Down
• Rename
• Delete

Renaming favorite topics can help you remember their contents. For example, you might change "Features of Widgets" to "Widget Hyperdrive" so that you can easily remember what is important to you in the help topic. When you change the title of a topic, the title is changed only on the Help Favorites page, not in the Contents, the Index, or in the help topic file itself.

ADDING SEARCH RESULTS TO HELP FAVORITES: Besides saving help topics as Help Favorites, you can also save the results of Help Searches on the Help Favorites tab. Just click the Save Search button on the toolbar when the right-hand pane displays search results you want to keep. Saving Search results enables you to review the search results repeatedly, without having to repeat the Search command. You will find more information about Search commands later in this article.

    Useful Adjustments You Can Make in the Tools/Options Dialog Box

You can activate or deactivate several useful features of the help viewer by using the Tools/Options/Help/General dialog box:

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The following table summarizes the options that you can set on the Tools/Options/Help/General dialog box:

Tools/Options/Help/General Option	Settings and Description
Show Help using	You cannot select another viewer for RAD Studio help.
Show topic abstracts	On: Displays topic summaries in the search results. Off: Displays only topic titles and source.
Reuse topic window	On: Reuses the topic display window for subsequent searches. Off: Creates a new tab for each search. (Note that if you do view multiple topics or perform multiple searches with this option Off, the growing number of tabs can quickly become a nuisance in the help viewer.)
Highlight search terms	On: Highlights search terms by placing a dark blue rectangle over search terms found in topics. Off: Does not highlight search terms.
Include partial searches in local search results:	On: Displays topics that contain partial matches as well as exact matches to the search term. Off: Displays only topics that contain an exact match with the search term.
Online topic language	You cannot select a language for the help that is different from your localized language version.

CHANGING COLORS: You can define the colors that the help viewer uses for text and for background. The colors you choose will apply to both the help viewer and Internet Explorer. For instructions on changing the colors, select Tools/Options in the help viewer and then press F1.

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