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Displaying Help from an Application

Displaying Help from an Application

It’s tempting to use an HTML file to provide help for a Java application, but how do you know which browser is installed on the run time platform and where it is located? On a Windows system you don’t need to know, because the .htm or .html file extension should be associated with the browser, and the “start” command can make the connection for you:

 boolean win = System.getProperty("os.name")           .toLowerCase().startsWith("win");if (win) {    Runtime runt = Runtime.getRuntime();    try {        runt.exec("start YourHelp.html");    }    catch (Exception ex) {}}

If a copy of the browser is already active, it will be re-used. Unfortunately this technique does not work on a Unix platform.

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