does not require further information the user can dismiss the assistance window and continue working if however the user needs more information he or she can place the mouse pointer over the assistance window this action will cause the assistance to progress to the next level of disclosure providing a cascading menu which may be a menu of information types for example as shown in fig2 information types are categories of information that might be of interest to a user for which the system can provide more details in one example information types can include procedures overviews instructions tasks tips examples concepts and reference additional levels of menus can be shown to a user who requires further information regarding a particular information type for example as can be seen in fig3 returning to fig2 when a user selects one of the information types an associated topic in the help system will be launched or the user will be shown another successively more detailed cascading menu of information help authors can tailor the help topics to a user 39 s anticipated needs this tailoring will reduce the user 39 s need to search through an entire help system for the particular topic which he or she needs to complete a task additionally menus of information types rather than the specifics of the information itself arc valuable as the menus reduce the need for a user to differentiate between types of information a user who does not know what a particular topic is can read the concepts information type a user who needs to use or work a particular topic will use the tasks information type other users need only an example information type etc these information types inherently.