Bug 244284 [Preferences] Preference page help is not shown when tree is selected
In the Preferences dialog, some pages don't have a help context associated with them. On these pages, the behavior of the help button/F1 key is inconsistent: the help tray is shown if a widget on the respective page is shown, but _not_ if the tree item is selected. Steps to reproduce the problem: 1. Open the Preferences dialog 2. Select the tree item "Tasks" 3. Press F1 (or press the help button in the lower left corner) -> no help is shown 4. Select any widget on the Tasks page 5. Press F1 -> the help tray is shown Root cause analysis: As far as I could find out, the reason for this inconsistent behavior lies in the method org.eclipse.jface.preference.PreferencePage.performHelp(), which is triggered in step 3. This method assumes, that the preference page's top level control has a help listener attached to it. This is true for many other preference pages [see for example org.eclipse.jdt.internal.ui.preferences.JavaBasePreferencePage.createControl(Composite)], but not for the Task preference page [sorry, couldn't find its source code]. So why does step 5 still show the help tray? That step triggers org.eclipse.jface.dialogs.TrayDialog.helpPressed() which searches the widget hierarchy for a help listener, and will always find one on the dialog level. I suggest to chage PreferencePage.performHelp() so that it behaves like TrayDialog.helpPressed(), for example by copying the recursive search for help handlers.
bundles/org.eclipse.jface/src/org/eclipse/jface/preference/PreferenceDialog.java
this.treeViewer = treeViewer;
	}
	/**
	 * Get the composite that is showing the page.
	 *
	 * @return Composite.
	 * 
	 * @since 3.1
	 */
	protected Composite getPageContainer() {
		return this.pageContainer;
	}
	/**
	 * Set the composite that is showing the page.
	 * @param pageContainer Composite
	 * 
	 * @since 3.1
	 */
	protected void setPageContainer(Composite pageContainer) {
		this.pageContainer = pageContainer;
	}
	/**
	 * Create the page control for the supplied page.
	 * 
	 * @param page - the preference page to be shown
	 * @param parent - the composite to parent the page
	 * 
	 * @since 3.1
	 */
	protected void createPageControl(IPreferencePage page, Composite parent) {