Displaying Help in a Web Browser

The online help is designed to be viewed in the JavaHelpTM viewer, which is integrated into the IDE. If you prefer, you can view the online help in the IDE's web browser or in another HTML browser.

The online help is divided into several help sets. Most help sets are packaged in a JAR file, while a few help sets are packaged in a zip file. The file usersguide.jar includes the core online help. Help sets are typically stored in the modules/docs directory in your installation directory.

To extract the online help from a JAR file:

  1. In a command window, change to the install-directory/modules/docs directory and list the files in that directory.
  2. Use the jar command-line utility to unpack the JAR file in which you are interested. On Microsoft Windows systems and UNIX® systems, the command is as follows:

    jar xf jar-file

    For jar-file, use the file name of the JAR file from which you want to extract files.

    The Jar tool makes copies of the files and writes them to the current directory. The directory structure is reproduced according to the package structure in the archive.

To view the online help in a web browser:

  1. From the IDE main window, choose View and choose Web Browser.
  2. Navigate to the files you just extracted. For example, to view the core online help, navigate to install-directory/modules/docs/org/netbeans/modules/usersguide. The following table provides pointers on where to start browsing the core help.
Topical information File Within
modules/docs/org/netbeans/modules/usersguide
Getting Started getstart/ide.html
Filesystems and Application Development filesystems/filesystems-classpath.html
Projects in the IDE project/project.html
Editing Source Files editing/intro.html
Compiling and Running Java Programs compile/compile_run.html
Debugging Programs debug/debug.html
Designing Java GUIs gui/intro.html
Editing Resource Bundles propfiles/editbundles.html
Using Version Control in the IDE vcs-nb/vcs_overview.html
Building With Ant ant/building.html
Configuring the Environment configure/configure.html
Accessibility accessibility/accessibility_home.html

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