Getting Help

After Spec Explorer has been installed, its help documentation is available in the following ways:

  1. In the Windows Start menu choose All Programs \ Spec Explorer 2010 \ Visual Studio 2010 Help.

  2. In the Spec Explorer drop-down menu available on the Visual Studio menu bar choose Help.

  3. In the various Spec Explorer windows you can obtain context-sensitive help by pressing the F1 key.

See the following for additional documentation and further assistance:

  1. The Spec Explorer Code Samples are provided as part of the installation and are available locally via the Windows Start menu at: All Programs \ Spec Explorer 2010 \ Samples for Visual Studio 2010.

  2. For new features and known issues in the current release see the latest Release Notes.

  3. For on-going community discussions, see the Model-Based Testing with Spec Explorer forum.

  4. For examples, news, and feature discussions, see the Spec Explorer Team Blog.

Help Library Management

To configure and manage the help system, Spec Explorer uses the Help Library Manager (HLM). As an extension to Visual Studio, Spec Explorer relies on Visual Studio for access to the Help Library Manager which is available in the Visual Studio Help menu by choosing Manage Help Settings. The HLM allows you to manage where you obtain the help that you might later request when using Spec Explorer. You can select whether you want the help system to direct your help requests to the online content or to a local copy of the content. This flexible system allows you to easily switch your help access to better match when your usage is online or offline. The HLM also allows you to access online updates to the documentation and download them to your computer for local use by Spec Explorer.

The installation of Spec Explorer provides a default copy of the local help in a HelpContent subdirectory under the installation location of Spec Explorer. For more details on the installation of Spec Explorer see Getting and Installing Spec Explorer. In the HLM you can use the Install Content from Disk dialog to browse to the HelpContent directory and select the appropriate file of type .MSHA to manually direct the help system to use that locally-resident copy of the help content. The default copy of this local documentation is a snapshot of the content at the time of release. If you rely on the local help while using Spec Explorer, it is recommended that you periodically go online and use the HLM to download and update that local copy of the documentation.

The most recently updated documentation is found in the online help content. When online help access is chosen in the HLM, the help system automatically directs requests for help to that online content. Using an explicit link is not required. However, for online help documentation, see Spec Explorer.

See Also

Concepts

Getting and Installing Spec Explorer

Other Resources

Getting Started with Spec Explorer