Microsoft Help 3.x

[Andrew Heard]

Has anyone seen Microsoft Help 3.0, loaded as UA on Visual Studio 10?

This, as I read it, is a prototype for a new ground-up help platform from Microsoft. Anyone in the know?

Is Flare planning to include it as another target type?

[RamonS]

The question is if Microsoft will make it officially a help platform available to the public. The current Help 2 is a Microsoft-only, proprietary format. Many have (re)engineered tools for that format and Microsoft has some tools available as well, but it was never meant to replace CHM. From what I read Help 3 will be interesting to watch. It is XHTML based and comes as PKZIP package, so nothing proprietary in regards to containers and something Flare should support easily. My only fear is that something Microsoft special will be in there and that the proprietary viewer will need the blatantly broken IE to work. Anything that isn't browser and OS independent doesn't strike me as a viable help platform going forward.
Aside from all that, Help 3 is currently in beta and nobody at MadCap will officially comment on support for beta products. They are way too smart to do that.

[NorthEast]

My only fear is that something Microsoft special will be in there and that the proprietary viewer will need the blatantly broken IE to work. Anything that isn't browser and OS independent doesn't strike me as a viable help platform going forward.

If it does become available, it'd be remarkably foolish for Flare not to support it - proprietary or not.

[KevinDAmery]

Also remember that this is the 3rd help format that MS has developed since CHM. They developed Help 2.0 as RamonS mentioned, plus the also developed the User Assistance Platform for Windows Vista. AFAIK both were originally intended to be released to the documentation community, but in both cases MS decided late in the development cycle to keep them as in-house formats.

Maybe this one will be different. I'm not about to bet the house on that, tho....

[RamonS]

My only fear is that something Microsoft special will be in there and that the proprietary viewer will need the blatantly broken IE to work. Anything that isn't browser and OS independent doesn't strike me as a viable help platform going forward.

If it does become available, it'd be remarkably foolish for Flare not to support it - proprietary or not.

True, but it all depends on it being a public format. I didn't mean that Flare shouldn't support it, I was more showing concern that it is a Windows-only, IE dependent piece of equipment that doesn't adhere to standards. Experience shows that this is likely when Microsoft releases something. In that case the help format is about as interesting as XPS is for portable documents.

[KevinDAmery]

My only fear is that something Microsoft special will be in there and that the proprietary viewer will need the blatantly broken IE to work. Anything that isn't browser and OS independent doesn't strike me as a viable help platform going forward.

If it does become available, it'd be remarkably foolish for Flare not to support it - proprietary or not.

True, but it all depends on it being a public format. I didn't mean that Flare shouldn't support it, I was more showing concern that it is a Windows-only, IE dependent piece of equipment that doesn't adhere to standards. Experience shows that this is likely when Microsoft releases something. In that case the help format is about as interesting as XPS is for portable documents.

Weellllll.... not exactly the same thing. End users typically don't need to share help systems with other people on different platforms the way they do with "normal" documents. With a help system, the only real requirement is that it run on the platform(s) that the application it is associated with works on. So if you're documenting Windows-only software, you really only need to worry about your help working on a Windows system. OTOH, if you're documenting a cross-platform application or a web service or the like, then you need to ensure that all platforms can use the help, so adhering to open standards is critical then.

MS coming up with a Windows-only help system is no more surprising than Apple designing a help system that only runs on OS X or the iPhone, or RIM designing something that only runs on a Blackberry - that's where their respective applications run. The only time cross-platform matters to them is when they need to reach customers who do not necessarily use their hardware (such as Apple does with iTunes or Quicktime).

[RamonS]

So why then develop a new help system at all? Microsoft tells us for a decade now that CHMs are all fine and dandy. I guess I have to ask that in a different place. Then again, with Mono going forward nicely it shouldn't be that off to consider other platforms than Windows.

[KevinDAmery]

I dunno - ask M$

[Andrew Heard]

I understand (can't remember where I got it from - probably a writeup of one of those UA conferences, but it may have been from the Microsoft website) that Help 3.0 is the version incorporated into Visual Studio 10 (as VS10 UA, not as a development platform) and 3.1 (though it may a be a higher subnumeric) is to be released to the hoi polloi as a development platform in 2010.

Supposed to have a raft of customer-driven enhancements. Hope this is all true and not a) a figment of my imagination or b) me naively falling for spin.

And I think that there is plenty of room in the market for a C21 version of chm.

[KevinDAmery]

And I think that there is plenty of room in the market for a C21 version of chm.

What's "C21"?

[NorthEast]

What's "C21"?

21st century, at a guess.

[Andrew Heard]

What's "C21"?

21st century, at a guess.

Good guess.

Reading too much David Foster Wallace - just so long at it doesn't insinuate into my technical writing...

[Andrew]

This seems to be a decent summary of what's going on with Help 3.

[KevinDAmery]

Well, in theory all that sounds like a decent design. The fact that they didn't hit the mark on any of the 4 main goals after two years isn't exactly cause for optimism though.

I'll believe it when they actually publish a spec / toolset that HAT vendors can put in shipping tools.

I think the one thing to remember is, the current help platforms still work and while they may not be perfect they don't have deal-killer flaws in them either. If MS Help 3.1 does turn out to be a) real and b) a great platform, there's still no imperative to deliver a working 3.1 help system the day they release it to the world (unless you work for some psycho manager, that is, in which case help formats are the least of your problems). We can afford to be patient.

[NorthEast]

If it doesn't bring back clippy, I'm not interested.

[KevinDAmery]

If it doesn't bring back clippy, I'm not interested.

[NorthEast]

If it doesn't bring back clippy, I'm not interested.

:shock:

Yep, a super-slick Aero 3D power-widget RSS web 2.0 twitter Clippy.

Think of the potential.

[RamonS]

So you better get a quad quad-core rig with 128GB RAM and at least triple 1TB graphics boards to make the minimum requirements.

[KevinDAmery]

So you better get a quad quad-core rig with 128GB RAM and at least triple 1TB graphics boards to make the minimum requirements.

Forget Call of Duty, this is what is going to drive NVidia and ATI profits for the next 8 years....

[NorthEast]

There won't be a Windows 8, it'll be Clippy OS.

Mark my words.

[KevinDAmery]

And instead of an Ultimate Edition there will be "Clippy OS Bob".

[RamonS]

No, they had that already, it was called "Vista".

[Andrew]

Well, in theory all that sounds like a decent design. The fact that they didn't hit the mark on any of the 4 main goals after two years isn't exactly cause for optimism though.

I'll believe it when they actually publish a spec / toolset that HAT vendors can put in shipping tools.

It's been known for a long time that the version shipping with VS2010 would not be available to ISVs at large, so I'm not terribly worried about them missing VS2010 beta. One thing that *does* concern me is that April Reagan, who was apparently the program manager for the project, has left the team, and like you, I'll wait to see the tools actually availalble to ISVs. I'm not holding my breath, given Microsoft's pile of help standards that end up "internal-only" standards, or scrapped altogether.

I think the one thing to remember is, the current help platforms still work and while they may not be perfect they don't have deal-killer flaws in them either. If MS Help 3.1 does turn out to be a) real and b) a great platform, there's still no imperative to deliver a working 3.1 help system the day they release it to the world (unless you work for some psycho manager, that is, in which case help formats are the least of your problems). We can afford to be patient.

CHM has become a steaming pile of dung, in my opinion; if I could get off of it, I would. WebHelp is marginally better, but has plenty of its own quirks.

[RamonS]

CHM has become a steaming pile of dung, in my opinion; if I could get off of it, I would. WebHelp is marginally better, but has plenty of its own quirks.

I agree in regards to CHM, but WebHelp has only a bad rap because of the flaws of IE that makes using WebHelp locally a royal PITA.

[Andrew]

CHM has become a steaming pile of dung, in my opinion; if I could get off of it, I would. WebHelp is marginally better, but has plenty of its own quirks.

I agree in regards to CHM, but WebHelp has only a bad rap because of the flaws of IE that makes using WebHelp locally a royal PITA.

Yes, because without that dratted IE, WebHelp wouldn't have 6 quadrillion files, all uncompressed. We wouldn't still need a webserver for WebHelp to be a first-class citizen.