UAL QuickHelp
QuickHelp was developed in 2008 by Justin Spargur and Leslie Sult. The goal of QuickHelp was to provide context-sensitive help at the point of need. In other words, we wanted our patrons to get the help they needed without forcing them to memorize the varying ins and outs of our numerous subscribed databases.
Screenshot of UAL QuickHelp
In the past, we had relied on tutorials to provide help specific to each of our databases. However, we found that students often didn't want to go through the entire tutorial, but had a very specific task with which they needed help. Taking this into consideration, UAL QuickHelp was developed to provide on-demand access to help for the two most common tasks, searching and retrieving articles. However, since there are always cases that require further expertise, we provided an additional tab labeled "Help", which can list either the contact details for an individual and/or reference desk, or can contain a chat widget for the MeeboMe chat client.
Technical Specifications
UAL QuickHelp was developed using a combination of Javascript, PHP 5.x, HTML, and CSS. All of the base code is compliant with current web standards, including W3C, Section 508, and WCAG A. Approximately 20% of the Javascript used was provided by Matt Kruse at http://www.mattkruse.com/. The remaining Javascript, as well as all of the PHP, CSS, and (X)HTML were developed in-house by The University of Arizona Libraries.
The source code for UAL QuickHelp may eventually be available under the GNU General Public License. The application has been written to allow a fair amount of customization to the user interface and includes a number of options for various functionality constraints. If the souce code becomes publicly available, it will be linked from this page.
Browser Requirements
We have worked very hard to ensure that every user, regardless of their browser or operating system, can access the content contained within a QuickHelp application. That being said, different browsers have different capabilities and some browsers may not be able to take full advantage of all of the features provided by QuickHelp. For browsers without Javascript, the QuickHelp application will degrade gracefully, providing hyperlinks to the content contained within this QuickHelp window. This allows the user the option of opening an additional window and toggling between the two windows. Alternatively, the user has the option of using the underlying website without viewing the QuickHelp content. A list of fully-supported browsers can be found below.
- Internet Explorer 7
- Internet Explorer 6
- Firefox
- Safari (non-draggable QuickHelp window)
- Opera (non-draggable QuickHelp window)
It is also recommended that you have a screen resolution of 800×600 or higher.
