Help system features

The help system contains the information that you need to learn about and effectively use your IBM® Rational® software. To browse topics, use the navigation features of the help system.

Help home page

When you first open the help system, the help home page is displayed. This page includes links to important help topics, especially those that you can use to get started with the product. The help home page also links to IBM, Rational, and product-specific Web sites where you can find more resources and information.

Tip: After you navigate from the help home page, to return to the page, in the topic toolbar, click the Home button Home button.

Navigating to topics

The help topics are organized in a navigation tree in the contents view; for details about how the topics are organized, see Help navigation. To expand and collapse the tree, either click the plus plus_icon and minus minus icon icons or double-click the topic titles. To open a topic, click its title.

Tip: To return to topics that you have viewed, in the topic toolbar, click the Go Back Go Back button and Go Forward Go Forward button buttons. You can use these buttons to access the browser history of your current session, but you cannot use them to go to the previous or next topics in the contents view.
Tip: If you opened many branches of the navigation tree and want to return to the starting state (with all of the branches closed), click the Collapse All button Collapse All button.

Index

You can also use the index to browse to topics. The index points you to topics that discuss a particular word or phrase. To use the index, at the bottom of the navigation pane, click the Index tab Index tab. Either type a term to find it in the alphabetically ordered list of index terms, or use the Previous and Next links to browse the list. Click a term to see its corresponding topic.

Tip: To return to the contents view, at the bottom of the navigation pane, click the Contents tab Contents tab. To find where a topic is located within the contents view, on the topic toolbar, click the Show in Table of Contents button Show in Table of Contents button.

Links to related topics

A topic contains an independent unit of information; for example, all of the steps to complete a task, a complete description of a concept, or a whole lesson in a tutorial. Most topics are related to other topics and include links to those related topics, either in the text or, more commonly, at the bottom of the topic.

Tip: To find additional information that is related to the current topic, browse the topics near it in the contents view, and browse the links to its related topics.
Tip: At the top of a topic, bread crumb links indicate the location of the topic in the hierarchy of the help contents. To go to the corresponding topic, click a bread crumb link.
Tip: To decide whether to open a topic, hover your mouse pointer over the topic link to display a short description of the topic.

Synchronizing the contents view and topics

When you follow a link from one topic to another, the contents view does not change. To locate the current topic in the contents view, in the topic toolbar, click the Show in Table of Contents button Show in Table of Contents button.
Tip: If you want the contents view to remain synchronized with the displayed topic, in the contents view toolbar, click the Link with Contents button Link with Contents button.

Feedback