Windows Help Files

Question

Back in the old days, Help was not trivial but possible: generate some funky .rtf file with special tags, run it through a compiler, and you got a WinHelp file (.hlp) that actually works really well.

Then, Microsoft decided that WinHelp was not hip and cool anymore and switched to CHM, up to the point they actually axed WinHelp from Vista.

Now, CHM maybe nice, but everyone that tried to open a .chm file on the Network will know the nice "Navigation to the webpage was canceled" screen that is caused by security restrictions.

While there are ways to make CHM work off the network, this is hardly a good choice, because when a user presses the Help Button he wants help and not have to make some funky settings

Bottom Line: I find CHM absolutely unusable. But with WinHelp not being an option anymore either, I wonder what the alternatives are, especially when it comes to integrate with my Application (i.e. for WinHelp and CHM there are functions that allow you to directly jump to a topic)?

PDF has the disadvantage of requiring the Adobe Reader (or one of the more lightweight ones that not many people use). I could live with that seeing as this is kind of standard nowadays, but can you tell it reliably to jump to a given page/anchor?

HTML files seem to be the best choice, you then just have to deal with different browsers (CSS and stuff).

Edit: I am looking to create my own Help Files. As I am a fan of the "No Setup, Just Extract and Run" Philosophy, i had that problem many times in the past because many of my users will run it off the network, which causes exactly this problem.

So i am looking for a more robust and future-proof way to provide help to my users without having to code a different help system for each application i make.

CHM is a really nice format, but that Security Stuff makes it unusable, as a Help system is supposed to provide help to the user, not to generate even more problems.

Answer 1

Yep, at some point they want to add behaviour to their help files which makes it a security issue and guess what happens, the remedy being often worse than the threat.

Or it's too simple or too complicated and being replaced by something new without caring for backward compatibility.

If you want it really simple and build for the ages go for .TXT

You didn't specify what your apps are coded in so it depends.

If it's a web app, plain HTML would be the best choice, for a help file you don't need special features or javascript so being browser independant should be straightforward. But also for desktop apps HTML, on- or offline are often used with good results.

PDF is the other general solution, and yes you can jump to specific pages, see this answer. Every pc has (or should) one client or the other installed, I wouldn't worry about that. I myself never choose Acrobat Reader, faster, sompler and often better solutions are available, my favorite is Sumatra.

I'm sure .Net apps have their own help system (no experience here) and many languages have options to display tooltips, windows or pages with help either by pressing a hotkey (F1) or clicking some control dialog.