Help File Authoring

[Ron L]

I am at the beginning of a new project, and want to have my developers work
on the Help files as we are developing the new application forms. Since
most of my previous work has been in the ASP arena, I am not familiar with
Help file authoring tools and process. Can anyone point me to a good
description of the process of help file development and any good (and cheap)
tools?

TIA
Ron Lounsbury

 

[Mitchell Vincent]

I am at the beginning of a new project, and want to have my developers work
on the Help files as we are developing the new application forms. Since
most of my previous work has been in the ASP arena, I am not familiar with
Help file authoring tools and process. Can anyone point me to a good
description of the process of help file development and any good (and cheap)
tools?

TIA
Ron Lounsbury

HTML Help Workshop has been available from MS for years, it's OK.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...tmlhelp/html/hwMicrosoftHTMLHelpDownloads.asp

I use Help & Manual - it is a few hundred dollars but *really* nice.
Best bang for the buck IMHO!
http://www.helpandmanual.com/

 

[Carlos J. Quintero [.NET MVP]]

If you want to use MS Help 2 (VS.NET integrated help) you have to use
Microsoft VSHIP SDK:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...en-us/htmlhelp/html/hwmscExtendingNETHelp.asp

If you want to use HTML Help (chm files), you can use Microsoft HTML Help
Workshop:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/htmlhelp/html/vsconHH1Start.asp

Since none of them is the easiest and friendliest tool of the world, you may
want to use 3rd party tools:

http://www.helpware.net/


--

Best regards,

Carlos J. Quintero

MZ-Tools: Productivity add-ins for Visual Studio .NET, VB6, VB5 and VBA
You can code, design and document much faster.
Free resources for add-in developers:
http://www.mztools.com

 

[Ron L]

Michael,

Thanks for the information, I will take a look at those.

Ron Lounsbury

 

[Ron L]

Carlos

Thanks for the infomation, I will take a look at them.

Ron Lounsbury

 

[Pete Lees [MVP]]

Ron,

I am at the beginning of a new project, and want to have my
developers work on the Help files as we are developing the new
application forms. Since most of my previous work has been in
the ASP arena, I am not familiar with Help file authoring tools
and process. Can anyone point me to a good description of the
process of help file development and any good (and cheap) tools?

Here are some additional resources to look at:

"Which Help Authoring Tool(s) Do You Choose?" and "Tools Comparison
Matrix":
http://www.helpstuff.com/helps­tuff.html#hats

"Which HAT (Help Authoring Tool) should I buy?":
http://www.cherryleaf.com/which_hat_(help_authoring_tool)_should_I_buy.htm

Reviews of commonly used tools:
http://www.mshelpwiki.com/inde­x.php?page=SoftwareReviews

The market leader is currently RoboHelp, but it is expensive and its
future is now uncertain, as explained here:

http://www.winwriters.com/arti­cles/rh/index.html

 

[Carlos J. Quintero [.NET MVP]]

HTML Help Workshop has been available from MS for years, it's OK.

It requires this hotfix when it starts crashing:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/294990/en-us

--

Best regards,

Carlos J. Quintero

MZ-Tools: Productivity add-ins for Visual Studio .NET, VB6, VB5 and VBA
You can code, design and document much faster.
Free resources for add-in developers:
http://www.mztools.com

 

[Ron L]

Carlos
Thanks for the warning. I'll keep it in mind.

Ron L