Knowledge Base Basics

Last modified: Thursday, January 17, 2008

GCom Internet's online knowledge base is a custom application which produces javascript controlled, static and dynamic html files meeting the following development criteria...

• Simple navigation
• Structured article hierarchy
• Consistent article formatting
• Independence of article content from site format
• Independence of article URL from display hierarchy
• Printer friendly formatting by way of CSS tags
• Support for javascript based dynamic tutorials

Hierarchy and Icons

The knowledge base hierarchy is represented by folders, each of which can in turn contain further sub-level folders and/or articles. Within this hierarchy, four basic icons are used to represent the elements of the knowledge base...

•  A knowledge base folder in the closed state
•  A knowledge base folder in the open state
•  A knowledge base article in the closed state
•  A knowledge base article in the open state

Navigation

Folders and articles are opened by clicking on the descriptive link associated with each element of the knowledge base. If a folder link is clicked, that folder will open and sub-level folders and article tiles will be displayed. If an article link is clicked, that article will be opened and displayed.

At all times, a breadcrumb trail of clickable links is displayed at the top of the page. This allows users to back track to the folder view of the current or previous levels of the knowledge base. When an actual article is open, the breadcrumb trail of links will also be displayed at the bottom of the page.

Each article can of course also contain standard hyperlinks to other related articles and pages from within the knowledge base itself, and also from the wider internet.

Bookmarking

One of the primary design requirements of the knowledge base was independence of article URL's (Uniform Resource Locator) from the hierarchy of folders displayed to users.

This feature ensures that articles can be safely bookmarked and referenced by URL without the risk of dead links if the hierarchy is later modified or expanded. Users can create bookmarks of articles via their browser menus or buttons, or can copy and paste from the address bar of their browser to the target document.

Printing

CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) elements have been used in the knowledge base to enable easy printing of articles in a printer friendly format.

When a page is printed, CSS formatting strips screen related items from the article prior to passing the data to the printer. Users can manage printing either by way of the standard menus or buttons of their browsers, or via the "Click here to print this page" link in the page title area.

Dynamic Tutorials

Through the use of javascript, the knowledge base is able to provide dynamic pages which accept user input and then tailor the tutorial example to incorporate the data provided.

In this way, rather than just providing a broad general example of a technique or process, the tutorial is able to provide a step by step solution to meet a user's specific requirements.

Dynamic tutorial pages have a data entry section at the top of the page, including "Submit" and "Print" buttons, with the main tutorial appearing below. The "Submit" button is used to populate the tutorial with the user entered data, while the "Print" button produces a cleanly formatted print out of the tutorial section without printing the data entry section itself.