keep help on top

[Guest]

I would like the help window sit in front of the document and not skitter
away when I click back to the document to what the help window is telling me
to do.

--thanx

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Mmmmm.... I would strongly oppose that.

Macintosh Word help works that way, and it's a royal PITA -- you open Help
to look something up and you can't see your document. You have to close the
Help to get back to the document, and then of course you can't read the Help

I would like the help window sit in front of the document and not skitter
away when I click back to the document to what the help window is telling me
to do.

--thanx

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

In Windows you can at least minimize the Help window and bring it back as
needed.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Tony Jollans]

I don't know much about Macs but I thought they were supposed to be
user-friendly. They must make the assumption (often valid, I suspect) that
Help is so useless that you won't want to keep it hanging around

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Tony:

I don't know much about Macs but I thought they were supposed to be
user-friendly.

Don't start me... They're more "Paternalistic" than user-friendly
They tend to disempower the user by doing things for you and making it very
difficult to find out what happened, or control it. A bit like Word 2003
until you learn to turn off the "Automatically stuff up my document while I
type" options and the "It looks like you're writing a suicide note, would
you like help with that?" options...

However, in this case, the problem is Microsoft's. Mac Help works quite
well, but Microsoft Office has its own flavour which is not the same as
either Mac Help or PC Office Help. And it's a PITA...

They must make the assumption (often valid, I suspect) that
Help is so useless that you won't want to keep it hanging around

No longer true. Mac Help used to be so simplistic it was totally useless.
One of the problems we MVPs have over in the Mac Word group is persuading
long-time Mac users to even LOOK in the Help. They have lived with trite
and trivial help on the Mac for so many years they simply never look there
any more.

Now, Mac Help is vastly improved: it has much more information in it, and
it's often even "helpful". If you can get the users to look in it.

Nothing like PC users, of course...

Cheers

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Tony Jollans]

Thanks for that John. Not using standard help (or anything else standard)
would seem to go right against everything Microsoft encourage other
developers to do.

Nothing like PC users, of course...

There is (I hope) nothing like a PC user