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Subject:RE: Dull, unsexy help question From:"Richard Smith" <Richard -dot- Smith -at- windriver -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 15 Dec 2000 13:41:26 -0800
Sometimes having too many ways to do something can be a problem. The best
solution is the one your users will expect. It's sort of like making
hyperlinks that are blue and underlined; you may have abetter idea, but
people are conditioned to expect certain things, and if your system is way
different, it may sacrifice usability.
What is very common in retail windows products these days is "Whats this"
help. That is where a user clicks the "?" then clicks the item for which
they want help. This is increasingly a common flavor. Your setup, OTOH
sounds a bit uncommon. I'd dump the custom window probably. OTOH, field
level help is usually quickie in&out stuff. It may not need to link to
anything else.
One nice thing you can do by eliminating field level CS help in your
main.chm is to use MS-HTML help for the tri-pane based "main" help, and
WinHelp for the "Whats this" help. If you have access to a Win2k box, the MS
paint program (among others) uses this approach, and it has many advantages.
When a user keys F1, the main.chm will display/appear/instantiate to the
default topic. If they want field level help, they use the "?"
The idea behind the use of HTML help and WinHelp is that you can format the
text in winhelp popups, whereas you cannot format HTML help popups. That is
whay many people don't use the HTML help popups, but use the secondary
window, javascript type of popup.
btw, I've never seen any really good stats on this subject, but I'd bet way
more than half of all windows users never access help by keying F1, or using
the "?". Does anybody have any good data on this?
I recall that the chm for Sonic Foundry's Siren Jukebox uses CS HTML help
implemented within their main chm file. At least v1.5 was that way. I don't
know about the current version. But you can download it from them or from
www.softseek.com amd take a look. I think it was a well done help system.
Richard Smith
Walter Crockett wrote:
> The 50 or so context-sensitive help topics each open in a
> custom single-pane
> window when you press F1. If you want to see more help, other
> than whatever
> links may be within the topic, you click Open Main Help,
> which opens the
> entire tri-pane .chm file.
>
> This has several disadvantages: ...
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