Patent ID: 6959294

Claim:
An application and a context-based help system operating on a computer, the application including a plurality of components that operate to effectuate application functions, each component of the application being constructed to describe a current context of the component representative of a current state of the component, at least some of the components being active at any one time, the help system including a help engine that operates to receive the current context from each active component, to dynamically build a current overall context of the application based on each received current context, to locate help topics based on the current overall context, and to filter and prioritize the located help topics, wherein each application describes the current context thereof by way of a member selected from a group consisting of at least one string-based keyword, and at least one name/value attribute pair, and wherein the help engine employs each keyword to locate the help topics and each attribute to filter and prioritize the located help topics.