latest windows help format

[tomasr]

Hi, what is the latest and greatest help format for windows? I'm familiar with chm, but I heard that there may be a newer version that is the new standard.

Thanks!
- Tomas

[SteveS]

Hi Tomas,

.chms have been out of favour for a while...

Perhaps the universal format that has taken over from the humble chm is web help. Similar (its html) but it isn't compiled and is viewed much the same as any webpage.

You can look at .net help, but after all the waiting it hasn't gone far.

The real question is 'what form of help do my isers want/need?' .chms were killed because of security fixes Microsoft made to Windows. Webhelp can be used on each machine or over a network (including the internet) with a few tweaks. .net help needs the user to install a viewer (Madcap has one for Flare's .net help free of charge).

HTH

[bobmoon]

Hi, what is the latest and greatest help format for windows? I'm familiar with chm, but I heard that there may be a newer version that is the new standard.

As SteveS says, web help is really the primary help format these days, though lots of people still make CHMs. You may have heard about Help Viewer 1.0, which is the new help format that Microsoft has started using for Visual Studio 2010 and MSDN. At this point, MS is the only one using it, and it remains to be seen whether they will release it so the rest of us can use it.

I sat in on a session given by Paul O'Rear of Microsoft at WritersUA 2010. He previewed Help Viewer 1.0 and gave a lot of information about how it works, and what MS was trying to accomplish with it. It looks like they've done a better job with it than Help 2.x (Side note: Paul shared some customer feedback quotes about Help 2.x that were both hilarious and frightening. I think they got the message.)

The bottom line is that no one knows whether this help format will be good enough for MS to make it the default format for Windows, and to release it to the rest of us. From what Paul said there are three possibilities. Microsoft could decide to keep it as an internal format only. They could release it to their partners (ISVs) for them to develop content that is integrated into MSDN or MS apps. Or, they could release it to the rest of the world so that others could distribute help content that would run in the Help Viewer.

I think that in order for us to be able to use Flare to create help for Help Viewer, that last option is what must happen. They would have to release the specs and tools for creating help files to vendors like MadCap (what they call OEMs) so that MadCap could build it into Flare.

If anyone is interested, I can post more about what Paul shared. He also gave these two blog sites as references:

http://blogs.msdn.com/kwolk (end-user focused)
http://blogs.msdn.com/TheHelpGuy (MS partner focused)


Bob

[RamonS]

As far as Microsoft goes, their only and therefore recommended format is CHM. They do have other formats that creep out into the public through reverse engineering, but there is no official endorsement. WebHelp is a good option, but you run into many obstacles and need to pull tricks like MOTW to make things work with IE. Other browsers such as Chrome appear to have issues when running WebHelp locally.
You may want to take a look at MadCap's DotNetHelp. There were many changes for the better in the latest Flare release. The problem here is that you either have to embed the help in the application or distribute a proprietary viewer.

As far as Windows and Help goes, there is no easy answer these days and Microsoft is the last place anyone should look at. They totally ignore the need for an updated public help platform.

[tomasr]

thanks everyone, that was very helpful! We usually direct our users to the web for documentation, but the users I have in mind here are the ones that can't use the internet for security reasons. So which help format is best for them?

[RamonS]

Assuming that they all run Windows use CHM.....unless they get the idea to run this off a network share.

[LTinker68]

... can't use the internet for security reasons.

Can't use the Internet or can't use browsers? Because WebHelp can run on a web server inside your LAN (i.e., as an "intranet" site) or it can run on the user's computer, but if they use IE then you'll need to enable MOTW so they don't get the yellow warning bar every time they open the help (you don't need to enable MOTW if it's running from a web server, just if it's running from a local computer that's not running as a server).

[Madcap Guru]

Webhelp is great for local users, as long as they have a browser they are good.

[tomasr]

Great, thanks for your help everybody!

[wbrisett]

Webhelp is great for local users, as long as they have a browser they are good.

Actually, don't they also need java installed? I'm getting complaints that my webhelp from Flare isn't working because some users aren't allowed to update their java and the webhelp isn't working for them. I'm thinking of trying some .chm documentation and seeing if that fixes the issues for them.

Wayne

[Andrew]

Webhelp is great for local users, as long as they have a browser they are good.

Actually, don't they also need java installed? I'm getting complaints that my webhelp from Flare isn't working because some users aren't allowed to update their java and the webhelp isn't working for them. I'm thinking of trying some .chm documentation and seeing if that fixes the issues for them.

Wayne

WebHelp doesn't use Java at all; it *does* use JavaScript (which has absolutely nothing to do with Java, despite the name similarity). JavaScript interpreters are included in every semi-modern browser (like, back to the early IE / Netscape browsers).

You need to get exactly what errors your users encounter. If they are running into a JavaScript error, I'm guessing that they have it installed on a local machine (i.e., their C:\ drive) and you have not built the WebHelp with Mark of the Web enabled, or that they have JavaScript (or some key element of JavaScript) turned off in their browser.

[wbrisett]

WebHelp doesn't use Java at all; it *does* use JavaScript (which has absolutely nothing to do with Java, despite the name similarity). JavaScript interpreters are included in every semi-modern browser (like, back to the early IE / Netscape browsers).

You need to get exactly what errors your users encounter. If they are running into a JavaScript error, I'm guessing that they have it installed on a local machine (i.e., their C:\ drive) and you have not built the WebHelp with Mark of the Web enabled, or that they have JavaScript (or some key element of JavaScript) turned off in their browser.

In talking with MadCap's technical support staff about requirements, it turns out that there are versions of IE that are no longer supported when I build my WebHelp using Flare 6. Based on the errors they are seeing and knowing the companies involved, I suspect it's related to outdated IE browsers.

Wayne

[RamonS]

Should be version 6 and down - although some don't believe that.