=head1 NAME Pod::POM::Web::Help - How to use this Perl documentation =head1 DESCRIPTION L is a Web application for browsing the documentation of Perl components installed on your local machine. Since pages are dynamically generated, they are always in sync with code actually installed. This application makes heavy use of dynamic HTML techniques like Ajax calls, autocompletion of search fields, etc., so it requires a modern browser. So far it has been tested on MSIE 6.0 and Firefox 2.0. =head2 Searching Users can type search criteria in the single search input field and then hit C. The behaviour depends on which search category was chosen in the search menu : =over =item perlfunc The input field should contain one of the (many) builtin perl functions. An autocompleter is automatically activated to help choose a proper function name. The answer will be an excerpt from the the L documentation, just for that specific function. =item perlfaq This will search all C entries whose title contains the word given in the search input field. =item modules The input field should contain a module name. An autocompleter is automatically activated to help choose a proper module name. The answer will be the documentation for that module. =item fulltext This only works if the local Perl installation was indexed (see L on how to do it). In that case, the input field can contain one or several words, possibly connected by boolean operators (L). The answer will be a list of modules that match that query, either in the documentation or in the source code. Each module is presented with some contextual excerpts of the matching words. =back =head2 Browsing The browsing tree starts with two sections B and B, containg core Perl documentation. The third section B reflects the structure of installed modules on the local machine (the various C<@INC> directories such as C, C, etc. are collapsed into a single tree). Only top-level nodes are loaded initially; subnodes are fetched dynamically through Ajax calls when opening the nodes. Navigation in the tree is either with the mouse or with the keyboard. At any point in time, at most one node is I : this is the one that receives keyboard events. Hence if the tree has no selected node, no keyboard events are interpreted. =head3 Mouse events Clicking on a node label selects that node, and displays the corresponding documentation page in the other frame (if applicable -- some nodes are just containers of other nodes, without their own documentation page). Clicking on the square C<+>/C<-> icon on the left of the label toggles the open/closed status of the node. =head3 Keyboard events =over =item C open the node =item C close the node =item C open the node and all its subnodes =item C close the node and all its subnodes =item C activate "show all" mode (the content of closed nodes is nevertheless visible, which may be useful for printing) =item C deactivate the "show all" mode =item C if closed, open the node; if already opened, pass focus to the next item (maybe the next node, or another tabindex-enabled HTML element, such as a form control). =item C> move to previous displayed node =item C> move to next displayed node =item C> if open, close the node; if already closed, move to parent node =item C> if closed, open the node; if already open, move to next subnode =item C select the first node of the tree =item C select the last visible subnode of the tree =item C refresh the node's content (if that node has an URL for dynamic content). =item C select the node and display its documentation page =item C..C close all nodes at level of the specified digit, and open all nodes above =back =head1 SEE ALSO L is another, earlier implementation of a Perl documentation server. Perl documentation can be browsed in command-line mode through the L utility. See L for information about how this application is implemented.