The idea is simple, a public help button that can be used by any application developer giving there application a way of displaying help or infomation to there users.
First let me define the problem, it seems to be a public problem as well.
So many applications public, open source or even commercial apps don't have help/information systems in their application. I'm even to blame I don't have help notes in most of my apps. It's not that I don't want too; it's just that I add them as the need arises, obviously this is a problem.
So what should I do?
Should I create a public help system application that can be used by anyone?
Creating a public help system would solve my problems and maybe solve some of my problems with public software too.
The public system would need to be like a wiki allowing anyone to edit or add to the help system.
Each button (Infolink, Helplink) would need a unique id (maybe the application name) + control.uniqueID.
The public help button system needs to be easy to use otherwise I won’t use it and the goal is to get me to use it.
The application ID if it has to be specified it should only be specified once, maybe in web.config
The control would then need a way of identifying it's self inside the application, maybe the controls uniqueID. Using the controls uniqueID could have issue, if two pages have controls with the same uniqueID. Maybe a hash of the URL and the uniqueID would work.
I’d like to give application developers a way of providing a help system without having to write one.
Does this idea sound good? Does it exist?
Let me know your thoughts.
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