Modern help-system for windows applications [closed]

Question

Currently I'm in a redesign of an old Windows-Desktop-Application. One goal of the redesign is to implement a modern looking UI in Office2010-Style with Ribbons.
Additional to our UI we want to implement a modern looking online-help. Currently we use Microsoft HTML Help (*.chm). But it even looks a bit stale.
I did now some research which help-systems are currently used by Microsoft:

• Microsoft AP Help (*.h1s)
• Microsoft Help 2.x (*.hxs)
• Microsoft Help Viewer 1.x / Help 3.0 (*.mshc)

My problem is, that I don't found any information if one of these systems is intended to be destributed with independent applications.

Which help-system would you prefer for a modern future-oriented application? I'm thankful for every tip or experince.

Answer 1

There are various "single source" documentation tools available that enable you to publish the same content to a variety of formats. Some popular ones (in no particular order) are Author-it, MadCap Flare, Help + Manual, and RoboHelp.

Support for the the more modern Microsoft help formats does exist, but Microsoft seems to have been somewhat slow in opening them up to other vendors. If you expect the users of your application to have internet access, another approach is to publish the help as HTML pages on a web server and link directly to those from your application. This has the advantage that you can update the help independently of the software (e.g. in response to customer queries), and some systems allow clients to participate in the help development by posting feedback to the site.