Abstract: An application assistance system is described herein that provides an on-demand canonical user interface that can quickly allow a user to learn the actions exposed by an application, such as a web site. The application assistance system is a pattern and method for guiding the user of a site/application through a set of possible actions on a page by providing a well-known invocation of hints. These hints show the actions/tasks that a user can take on a page by visually spotlighting a specific area of the page and providing a tooltip or pop-up dialog that describes the action/task the user is trying to complete while preserving the data the user has already entered. The system also provides a task pane that supports randomly accessing various steps of a task the system is explaining. Thus, the system makes it much easier for a user to learn to use an application.

Abstract: An application assistance system is described herein that provides an on-demand canonical user interface that can quickly allow a user to learn the actions exposed by an application, such as a web site. The application assistance system is a pattern and method for guiding the user of a site/application through a set of possible actions on a page by providing a well-known invocation of hints. These hints show the actions/tasks that a user can take on a page by visually spotlighting a specific area of the page and providing a tooltip or pop-up dialog that describes the action/task the user is trying to complete while preserving the data the user has already entered. The system also provides a task pane that supports randomly accessing various steps of a task the system is explaining. Thus, the system makes it much easier for a user to learn to use an application.

Abstract: A development system providing a method for information hiding in executable programs is described. In one embodiment, for example, a method of the present invention is described for hiding information in computer programs, the method comprises steps of: receiving first input comprising program modules for a computer program being created, the program modules including data and code; receiving second input comprising information to be hidden in the computer program; linking together the program modules to form an executable computer program, including determining pads necessary for aligning data and code; and hiding the second input in the executable computer program by storing portions of the second input at locations in the executable computer program intended for pads.