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
Iterator nodes = preferenceManager.getElements(PreferenceManager.PRE_ORDER)
							.iterator();
					while (nodes.hasNext()) {
						IPreferenceNode node = (IPreferenceNode) nodes.next();
						IPreferencePage page = node.getPage();
						if (page != null) {
							if (!page.performOk()){
								hasFailedOK = true;
								return;
							}
						}
					}
				} catch (Exception e) {
					handleException(e);
				} finally {
					
					if(hasFailedOK){
						setReturnCode(FAILED);
						getButton(IDialogConstants.OK_ID).setEnabled(true);
						return;
					}
					
					if (!errorOccurred) {
						
					    
						handleSave();
					}
					setReturnCode(OK);
					close();