Welcome to the Online Help for the IDE

The IDE has online help to assist you as you use the IDE to build an application. The left pane of the help viewer shows the topics in the table of contents. Select a topic to find information about that topic.

Searching the Online Help

To find the answer to a specific question, click the Search tab or the Index tab at the top of the left pane of the help viewer and type a keyword in the Find text box.

Help in Context

The online help is context-sensitive, which means that you can press F1 in most parts of the IDE to open the help viewer to a topic that is specific to what you are doing or where you are in the IDE.

Getting Started With the IDE

If you are new to this environment, the Getting Started section of the online help provides a tour of the IDE, key IDE concepts, information on how to get started using the IDE, and a tutorial. The Getting Started Tutorial familiarizes you with the main features and concepts of the IDE by guiding you through the process of compiling, running, and debugging a simple application in the JavaTM programming language. The tutorial takes less than an hour to complete and does not require Java language programming experience.

Help Viewer Shortcuts

Most of the features of the help viewer are accessible from the keyboard. When you first open the viewer, keyboard focus is on the Previous button. The traversal order goes from the toolbar to the selected tab to the left content pane and then to the right pane.

The following table lists the keystrokes most commonly used to navigate the help viewer. For a complete list of shortcuts, see Help Viewer Shortcuts.

Keys Action
Ctrl-Tab Shifts focus to the next component
Ctrl-Shift-Tab Shifts focus to the previous component
Up arrow Selects the previous item in the table of contents or the index
Down arrow Selects the next item in the table of contents or the index
Ctrl-T Shifts focus to the next link in a topic
Ctrl-Shift-T Shifts focus to the previous link in a topic
Ctrl-spacebar Follows a link in a topic

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