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Running the IDE Tutorial. Each time I finish a Wizard operation the tutorial help window closes as well.
I cannot reproduce it on Linux. After opening Help window I performed the New from template action. The wizard panel was shown. After closing the wizard panel the Help window rest opened.
reassigned to core/help system
Jim, does this happen when you've pressed the Help button in the wizard? If so, the behavior is as designed. However, if you open the Help window before you open the wizard, the Help window should stay open even after you finish with the wizard. IMO, the behavior in these scenarios is correct. Chances are if you are opening the help in a dialog or wizard, you only care about the help for that wizard or dialog. But if you open the help window before the wizard, you might be going through a procedure that might involve multiple dialogs and wizards so the the help window should stay visible throughout this procedure. If the Help window disappears when you close the wizard (even if you opened Help before opening the wizard), let us know. Or if you disagree with me about the proper behavior, please explain why (a use case would be helpful). Otherwise I'll close this issue as INVALID.
Comments: Looking at other products I see either the help window staying open when you close the wizard, or the wizard help window being a new and separate help window. Consider the scenario where the user opens the help from the wizard, clicks a link and then another and finds some information that is useful for the next step after completing the wizard. When the person closes the wizard, the help goes away and the user will have a tough time finding that piece of help again. If you leave the help open, and the user doesn't need it anymore, he or she can close it then. My 2 cents.
Reassigning to Marek, new owner of output window and help system
1.Help window stays opened when Wizard closes if Help window was opened BEFORE Wizard was opened. 2.Help windows is closed when Wizard closes if Help window was opened AFTER Wizard was opened. Assigning to HIE to confirm if behavior descibed above is correct or not. I tested on Linux/Gnome and Win XP current dev build NB 4.1 6 Jan (my own build) and JDK 5.0 Update 1. Help window is still repositioned when Wizard is closed - this behavior should be fixed as excluding modality fix will be integrated to JDK. See issue #29448 for mode details about this. If you find any case above case 1 is not true please add info here/reopen issue. Thanks.
I tend to say that the Help window should not disappear even if it was open from the wizard for the reasons stated by ckutler. If the help window showed just 1 help page describing the current wizard page, then it would be okay. But as we open up the whole help set with certain topic selected, the user can browse to different topics and try something that is discribed there which requires closing the current wizard. Having to close the help window manually after closing the wizard is not a problem IMO. Patrick, Jindro, what do you think about such behavior? Thanks.
I can see a scenario that Jano and Chris discuss. I tend to think that it is less common than someone opening the help in the wizard just for the wizard help. Then again, automatically dismissing the help is probably more annoying for the person that doesn't want it to happen than having to manually dismiss the help is annoying for the person who would like it to go away automatically. Consider me agnostic on this issue.
You summarized it exactly as I was thinking about it. The scenario when the user wants to continue with help after closing the wizard is definitely less common, but the current behavior is in this case more annoying than closing the help window always manually. Okay I think we should try to do it this way and see how users react. It is probably too late for 5.0 as we need user feedback on this.
Note: From JDK 5.0_03 there is modality exclusion supported by JDK ie. reparenting of Help window is not performed ie. there are no sideeffect of reparenting of Help window anymore - no closing of Help window or dancing around the screen. This is standard behavior for future ie. Help window stays open regardless time it was opened (before or after wizard/modal dialog was opened). So for JDK > JDK 5.0_03 this issue is fixed. For older JDK I recommend leave it as it is. I will check current Apple JDK 5.0.
Current version of Apple JDK 1.5.0_02-36 does not support modality exclusion. Closing as FIXED.
verified in NB5.0(200510251800)