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Bug 350052

Summary:	[Help] Help should support easy markup of hyperlinks that point to the outside
Product:	[Eclipse Project] Platform	Reporter:	Martin Oberhuber <mober.at+eclipse>
Component:	User Assistance	Assignee:	platform-ua-inbox <platform-ua-inbox>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:
Severity:	enhancement
Priority:	P3	CC:	cgold
Version:	3.7
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	All
Whiteboard:	stalebug

Description Martin Oberhuber

2011-06-22 09:52:37 EDT

Build ID: 3.7 release
CQ:WIND00253884

Our help content includes a couple of hyperlinks that "point to the outside" eg direct the user to some partner's homepage.

When our help is viewed in the Eclipse Helpviewer, such external hyperlinks also open inside the helpviewer. That's often not desired since homepages made for the web include media content (and videos don't work in the embedded xulrunner), or should probably be bookmarked.

What we need is support in the help system that would allow us to mark up such external hyperlinks, directing the help system to open them in an external browser when they are clicked in the helpviewer.

I didn't find any documentation how to do that... perhaps it's possible today and I just don't know how ?

Comment 1 Martin Oberhuber

2011-06-22 10:04:28 EDT

I should also mention that opening unknown external web content in the helpviewer / embedded web browser always includes a small risk that the embedded help viewer could crash due to that content, and that would crash the entire Eclipse / Workbench.

We've seen the embedded browser crash all of Eclipse due to Adobe Flash content, for instance, when an inappropriate Flash Plugin was installed.

Therefore in terms of risk management, I think it's important to have the helpviewer open "external hyperlinks" in an external web browser. Perhaps that behavior could even be made the default by means of code in the helpviewer? I do know that there's a click handler.

Comment 2 Chris Goldthorpe

2011-06-22 19:34:37 EDT

It's not possible to indicate that a specific link should always open externally. The only setting that exists is the preference to open every link from the help view in a browser. The code that decides how to open a help view link is org.eclipse.help.ui.internal.views.ReusableHelpPart.openInternalBrowser(String).

Intro already has the behavior you are describing, if you click on a link in the News section of the What's New page it will open external links in an external browser rather than use the Eclipse Browser. I find that in practice very few pages display well in the help view and setting the default action to be open help view in a browser may be a better default.

Comment 3 Chris Goldthorpe

2011-06-22 19:36:30 EDT

That last sentence should have been 

"I find that in practice very few pages display well in the help view and setting the default action to be to open help view links in a browser may be an improvement.

Comment 4 Lars Vogel

2019-11-14 03:41:50 EST

This bug hasn't had any activity in quite some time. Maybe the problem got resolved, was a duplicate of something else, or became less pressing for some reason - or maybe it's still relevant but just hasn't been looked at yet.

If you have further information on the current state of the bug, please add it. The information can be, for example, that the problem still occurs, that you still want the feature, that more information is needed, or that the bug is (for whatever reason) no longer relevant.

If the bug is still relevant, please remove the "stalebug" whiteboard tag.