DotNet Help vs WebHelp - which should we choose?

[Laurah]

Hi,

I'm totally and utterly confused about the DotNet Help (mainly because I don't know much about .net applications).

When would you decide to use a DotNet Help, as opposed to a WebHelp, as a format of an online help for a .NET application? From all the posts in this forum it sounds like the DotNet Help is more hassle than it's worth, so I'm really interested to hear from people who made the decision to move to .NET help. In fact, would be great to hear cases and experiences with both formats. Our company is moving more and more towards .NET development, and I guess we have to make the decision to move at some point - at the moment I'm leaning very heavily on the WebHelp side! Currently we have .chm for Windows-only products, and WebHelp for platform-independent products.

Thanks for any views/experiences,
Laurah

[KevinDAmery]

I haven't worked with either (still using CHM because of the operating environment our application works under) but I do know that a .NET application does not require a DotNetHelp help system. You can use CHM or WebHelp with a .NET app, so I would be inclined to choose one of those. I'd use WebHelp under most conditions; CHM is good is situations where for whatever reason you don't want to use a browser or if you want a single compiled file rather than numerous loose files for your documentation.

[LTinker68]

DotNet Help is similar to CHM output in that...

• It has its own viewer (doesn't use browser window); DotNet Help viewer has to be installed on user's machine in order to view it.

DotNet Help is different from CHM output in that...

• It can be viewed over a network (CHM can only be viewed on the local computer).
• There are numerous files in the output, instead of a single file like CHM output.
• The skin is a more modern look, although at the moment you can't modify the skin so you're stuck with the default MadCap one.
• There is an SDK available, although I don't know much about it so I'm not sure how it extends the capabilities. It might allow you to embed the DotNet Help output inside your .NET application (not positive about that).

[Richard Ferrell]

Also the Dot Net output if not embeded into an application would require you to install the Dot Net Viewer on your end user machines, That would not be required for Webhelp as Everyone already has a browser.

[Laurah]

Thanks all for your feedback.

I still don't quite understand the benefits of DotNet Help over WebHelp. Obviously compared to CHM, the availability over a network is a big bonus. But what about WebHelp? The only drawback to WebHelp format as far as I can see is Mark of the Web, which can be annoying if WebHelp is installed locally, although not really a showstopper.

So why would you ever choose DotNet Help over WebHelp?

Thanks,
Laurah

[LTinker68]

The part about being able to embed it into your .NET application. If you're not going to embed it, then I'd do the WebHelp output because it's cross-browser and cross-platform compatible (and you can add a MOTW to it if it will be running locally).

[Laurah]

Thanks!

I presume that the embedding would work much like embedding a CHM to a Windows app? You could also "embed" the WebHelp into a DotNet application, by creating context-sensitive links to a particular topic within the WebHelp (we do this with some apps). It's not so much embedding as creating context-sensitivity, but it works for us.

I guess we'll be sticking with the tried and tested WebHelp from now on too.

Thanks,
Laurah

PS: Adding MotW is sometimes not possible due to security reasons on customers' side - but like I said, it's a small annoyance that we can live with.

[LTinker68]

No, embedding as in it's part of the application. Like Flare's help doesn't open a separate browser window -- it opens up in the application.

[RamonS]

No, embedding as in it's part of the application. Like Flare's help doesn't open a separate browser window -- it opens up in the application.

That depends on how it is accessed. When you open the mchelp file directly from the file system you get an independent window. Most people I talked to don't like the embedded help, but some think it is the best invention since sliced bread.