One way I can think of is having html snippets in resources or assets
- perhaps as html files - maybe as formatted strings.
This sounds lovely.
Or, just host the help online, linking to it via an ACTION_VIEW Intent
on your URL. I'm not sure if the HTML5 offline stuff works with the
Android browser, but if it does, use that to allow your help to be
usable even when there's no connection. IMHO, this will be the long-term
direction for this sort of thing, as it gives you easy publishing, easy
updates independent of the app itself, yet still isn't completely busted
when the user is offline.
Something that I've done is bundled stuff together as a web widget, and
use that
to drastically cut down on load times -- it's not for offline use, but
the idea is the
same. One thing that might be helpful with my approach was that I just
to built the
pages under a normal web server and maintain them that way. I then just use
wget with some of its nice archiving facilities to suck them all back
in, and zip the
proceeds. If you need to maintain it as a web accessible site too, it's
a big win since
there's essentially only one "source tree".
Works great for css and js and sprites too (which was really my big
motivation) .
Mike
Or, write your help in the form of an EPUB document and make it
available, so those with an EPUB reader (e.g., FBReaderJ) can use it.
Or, write your help in the form of a PDF document and make it available,
so those with a PDF viewer (e.g., Documents To Go) can use it. And see
if they have a referral program for sales, so you can make a bit of
money on people who buy that app to view your help.
Or, don't worry about on-device help due to form-factor issues and just
provide support via your Web site.
However, I think
it would break down once an html file linked to another html file or
an image or icon.
Worst-case scenario: create a content provider to serve your help files.
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