AIR Help Gallery - Please send in screenshots of your implementations of AIR Help.

This example shows the current "LMI AIR Help" implementation (available as a beta on request). This is intended to be a framework that others can use to develop their own AIR Help applications. It provides all of the common Help features you'd expect in a Help system. Starting from this framework, you could add features like a Twitter feed, chat interface, user-definable content, state-based content filtering, and more.

Download: ditafmx.1.1.01.02.air [3127KB]

An example of an unconventional AIR Help application. This is a map of Germany that floats on the desktop (AIR Help applications don't need to be in a window or be rectangular). When you click a city label, a description of that city pops up in a scrolling window. When thinking about AIR Help design, don't limit yourself to the traditional ideas of "Help.".

Similar features to those found in the current LMI AIR Help implmentation, but this uses an "accordion" control for the navigation panels rather than a tab control. This is a nice option when you've got a number of navigation panels. This includes two Tables of Contents; one provides a view of the topics ordered by "type" while the other provides the topics ordered alphabetically. This prototype also provides a "Comments" feature that lets end users add comments to topics, and those comments are visible to all users of this Help system.

Download: airhelp-proto4.air v.0.06 [985KB]   (see airhelp-proto4-notes.txt for misc bits of info)

Using the code from the first prototype, I wrapped the shipping FrameMaker 7.2 Help system (HTML and JavaScript files) in an AIR Help file. It all works exactly as you'd expect, and the search is even a little bit faster than when viewed through FireFox or IE. This is a *very* basic implementation of AIR Help, but shows that you can just wrap up most any browser-based help system and it should work.