Oracle International Corporation

International Business Machines Corporation

John David Russell

Andrew Richard Harding

Lee Anne Kowalski

Techniques are described for displaying a list of items while simultaneously depicting how the items satisfy multiple criteria. A list of visual indicators is displayed in an order. The order indicates how the items satisfy a first criteria. For example, the list of items may be books displayed in alphabetical order. The order indicates how the titles rank alphabetically. While retaining the order, information is displayed to visually indicate how the items satisfy other criteria selected by the user. The user may select other criteria, and information is displayed to indicate how the items satisfy the other criteria. A page is downloaded by a browser on a client. The browser executing a page generates visual indications of how items satisfy the multiple criteria in response to user selection of the criteria.

Visually organizing and highlighting a list of items to show how they satisfy multiple criteria selected by a user

A system and method are provided for generating a virtual book from a set of electronic documentation. From the documentation, a set of topics (e.g., headings) are copied and saved, along with references to their locations in the documentation. The hierarchy of documentation topics is also recorded so that from one topic, its parent and/or children can be easily reached. The topics are classified into one or more categories (e.g., concept, task, example, reference, troubleshooting) identifying general (and/or specific) types of information. When a subject for a virtual book is received, the topics are searched for those relevant to the subject. A virtual book is then assembled to contain the relevant topics, which may be grouped by category. Within a category, topics may be listed in alphabetical order, in order of relevance, in the order they appear in the documentation or within a given book, etc.

System and method for producing a virtual online book

A method and system in accordance with the present invention allows the help information to be shared independent of its invocation method, so that the information can be displayed in both integrated user assistance mechanisms and traditional online help windows. The method includes receiving an invocation of one of a plurality of user assistance mechanisms; and collecting help information from an information source, the information source comprising a structure indicating what portion of the information source is to be displayed based upon the invoked user assistance mechanism. With a method and system in accordance with the present invention, help authors place a metastructure or secondary structure in the information source. This secondary structure indicates which parts of the information source should be displayed by that particular integrated user assistance mechanism. A method and system in accordance with the present invention reads the information source and secondary structure and then takes the information defined by the secondary structure and passes it to the integrated user assistance mechanism to be displayed. For example, the same text information can be retrieved from one source and displayed in the following three places&mdash;a traditional online help window, inline text in a software dialog, inside a pop-up window over a control. With the method and system in accordance with the present invention, the author only has to maintain one source, so that both the integrated user assistance mechanism and the traditional online help will contain the accurate information.

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Foster City, CA, United States of America

John David Russell