出自UXGuide.net

用户帮助

User Assistance

Mac OS X supports two user help components: Apple Help and help tags. Help tags allow you to provide temporary context-sensitive help whereas Apple Help allows you to provide a more thorough discussion of a topic or procedure.

Mac OS X提供两种用户帮助组件：Apple帮助和帮助标签。帮助标签允许您提供临时的，上下文相关的帮助信息，而Apple帮助提供针对某一主题或者过程更为全面的讨论。

Use these mechanisms to provide user help in your application instead of using help mechanisms that are specific to your application. When users refer to help, it is usually because they are having difficulty accomplishing a task and therefore might be frustrated. This is not a good time to make them learn yet another task, such as figuring out a help viewing mechanism that differs from the one they use in all the other applications on their computer.

您应该在您的程序中使用上述机制来提供帮助而不是使用您的程序独有的机制。当用户需要使用帮助时，通常是因为他们遇到了困难并可能感到沮丧。这时候让他们仍然要学习另外一套和其他程序不同的帮助系统不是一个好主意。

Apple帮助

Apple Help

With Apple Help, you can display HTML files in Help Viewer, a browser-like application designed for displaying and searching help documents. Help Viewer can also display documents containing QuickTime content, open AppleScript-based automations, retrieve updated help content from the Internet, and provide context-sensitive assistance.

通过Apple帮助，您可以在帮助查看器中显示HTML的文件。帮助查看器帮助查看器是类似于浏览器的程序，用来显示和搜索帮助文档。帮助查看器也可以显示包含QuickTime内容的文档，打开基于AppleScript的自动化脚本，从互联网上获取帮助内容的更新，以及提供上下文相关的帮助。

Users can access Apple Help by launching the Help Viewer application but they will more commonly access it from your application, in one of three ways:

用户可以打开帮助查看器来访问Apple帮助，但是更通常的是用户以下面三种方式的一种从您的程序中访问Apple帮助：

• The Help menu. The Help menu is the far-right item in the application region of the menu bar. When you register your help book with Help Viewer, the first item in the Help menu is the system-provided Spotlight For Help search field. The second item in the menu should be ApplicationName Help, which opens Help Viewer to the first page of your help content. For more information on the Help menu, see “The Help Menu.”

帮助菜单。帮助菜单位于程序的菜单条最右边的位置。当您将你的帮助文档注册到帮助查看器时，帮助菜单的第一个菜单项是系统提供的基于Spotlight的搜索文档。第二个菜单项应该是程序名帮助，这个菜单项会在帮助查看器打开您的帮助文档的首页。关于帮助菜单的更多信息，请参考“帮助菜单。”

• Help buttons. When necessary, you can use a Help button to provide easy access to specific sections of your help. When a user clicks a Help button, send either a search term or an anchor lookup (which leads to a specific page or pages) to Help Viewer. It’s not necessary for every dialog and window in your application to have a Help button. If there is no contextually relevant information in the help, don’t display a Help button.

帮助按钮。当有必要的时候，您可以使用帮助按钮来提供到您的帮助文档的特定章节的快速访问。当用户点击帮助按钮时，将搜索条件或者定位标示发送给帮助查看器。不是每个窗口或者对话框都需要帮助按钮。如果帮助文档中没有与当前上下文相关的信息，则不要显示帮助按钮。

• From a contextual menu item. If contextually appropriate help content is available for the object being pointed to, the first item in the contextual menu is Help. As with Help buttons, the menu item can send either a search term or an anchor lookup to Help Viewer.

上下文菜单项。如果当前所指向的对象有合适的上下文相关的帮助内容，则上下文菜单第一项应该是帮助。和帮助按钮一样，菜单项也可以将搜索条件或者定位标示发送给帮助查看器。

See Apple Help Programming Guide for more information on writing Apple Help content and providing it with your application.

关于Apple帮助的更多信息，请参考Apple帮助编程指南。

帮助标签

Help Tags

Help tags enable your application to provide basic help information for its interface elements without forcing the user to leave the primary interface.

帮助标签让您的程序提供接口元素的基本帮助信息而无须用户离开当前的主界面。

Help tags are short messages that appear when the user leaves the mouse pointer hovering over an interface element for a few seconds (see Figure 6-12 for an example of a help tag). When the pointer leaves the object, the tag vanishes. If the mouse pointer is not moved, the operating system hides the help tag after about 10 seconds.

帮助标签是当用户鼠标在界面元素上停留几秒后显示的一段简短消息（关于帮助标签的例子如图6-12）。当鼠标离开指向的对象时，标签也会消失。如果鼠标指针没有移动的话，帮助标签页会在大约10秒后由操作系统隐藏。

Figure 6-12 A help tag
图 6-12 帮助标签

The text of a help tag should briefly describe what an interface element does. If you find that you need more than a few words to describe the function of a control, you might want to reconsider the design of your application’s user interface.

帮助标签的文本应该简洁的描述了接口元素能做些什么。如果您发现需要更多的词语来描述控件的功能，您可能需要重新考虑您的用户接口设计。

Define help tags in Interface Builder, where they are called tooltips. Here are some guidelines to help you create effective help tag messages.

在Interface Builder中可以定义帮助标签， 也叫提示。下面是一些帮助您创建有效的帮助标签消息的准则：

• Use the fewest words possible. Try to keep your tags to a maximum of 60 to 75 characters. Because help tags are always on, it is important to keep your tag text unobtrusive—that is, short—and useful. A tag should present only one concept and that concept should be directly related to the interface element. Localization can lengthen the text by 20 to 30 percent, which is another good reason to keep the tag short.

尽可能的简洁。将您的标签消息试着限制在60到75个字符以下。因为帮助标签总是打开着的，所以保持标签文字不引人注目——也就是说，简洁——且有用。一个标签只应该讲一个内容，并且该内容和接口元素直接相关。本地化可能会增长消息的20%到30%，这也是保持标签消息尽可能简短的另外一个理由。

• Don’t put the interface element’s name in the tag unless the name helps the user and isn’t available onscreen. If an element is referred to by name in the documentation and in the tag, make sure the names match.

不要在标签中包含接口元素的名字除非能够对用户构成帮助并且屏幕上没有该控件的名字。如果在文档中和标签中都提及到某控件的名字，确定这两个名字是一样的。

• Describe only the element the mouse pointer hovers over.

仅描述鼠标指向的控件。

• You can use a sentence fragment beginning with a verb, for example, “Restores default settings”. You can also omit articles to limit the size of the tag. If the tag text is a complete sentence, end it with a period.

您可以使用以动词开头的一些句子片段，例如，“恢复默认设置”。如果标签的文本是一个完整的句子，结尾使用句号。

• Use help tags to provide functional information for controls that are unique to your application. Don’t tag window controls, scroll bars, and other parts of the standard Mac OS X interface.

仅对那些您的程序独有的控件提供帮助标签。不要对窗口控件，滚动条以及其他的标准Mac OS X控件提供帮助标签。

• You can create contextually sensitive help tags, but you don’t have to; the same text can appear when an item is selected, dimmed, and so on. By describing what the interface element accomplishes, you may help the user understand the current state of the control even if the tag is applicable to all situations.

您可以创建上下文相关的帮助标签，但是您不一定要这么做。当一个控件被选中或者被模糊化时，帮助标签显示同样的信息。如果能够描述接口元素完成了什么，则可以帮助用户了解当前控件的状态。

• Write the help tag text in one of these ways, depending on the interface you’re documenting:

基于您的接口，按照如下方式之一编写帮助标签的文本：

Describe what the user will accomplish by using the control. For example, “Add or remove a language from your list” or “Reduce red tint in the selected area”. Most help tags can use this format.

描述用户可以用这个控件做什么。例如， “从列表中增加或者移除一个语言 ” 或者“减少选定区域的红色”。 大多数帮助标签可以使用这种格式。

Give extra information to explain the results of the user’s action. This kind of tag is most effective in an interface that already includes some instructional text, because the tag and the interface text work together to describe what the control does and how the user manipulates it.

提供用户操作结果的额外信息。通常这类标签使用在那些已经有了一些介绍文字的控件上，因为标签和接口文字一块描述了控件能够做什么以及用户怎样使用控件。

Define terms that may be unknown to the user. This kind of tag should be used only if the interface already contains instructions to the user.

定义一些用户可能不知道的术语。这种类型的标签仅应用于那些已经包含了介绍文字的控件。