Re: HTML based help

[Chuck Martin <cmartin -at- SEEKERSOFT -dot- COM>]

What kind of information would you like? I wrote an article last year for
the WinHelp Journal comparing the HTML-based Help technologies of the two
main players in this arena. You can still find the article at
www.winwriters.com.

Currently, I'd say be veeeeery careful before committing to HTML-based
Help. The technologies are fairly proprietary, not to mention quite new.
After all, Microsoft's HTMLHelp is a just-released 1.0 version....

Microsoft's HTMLHelp requires that a user have Internet Explorer 3.0 or
newer installed. Netscape's NetHelp 2.0 requires Communicator 4.0 or newer
installed. Sun is just announcing its technology this month and won't
release it until next year. Netscape's and Microsoft's technologies won't
run with the other's browser. The result: you have to either insure that
all of your users have the correct browser installed, or you must ship and
install the browser files yoru self. To be fair, the scrict Help systems
typically don't require that a user switch browsers, and need a subset of
the entire browser install to function. But it seems to me that both
companies seem to see HTML-based Help systems as simply one battlefield in
the war to usurp each other's web browsers.

Contrast all these difficulties and incompatibilities with Windows Help,
which has the WinHelp engine automatically installed as a part of the
operating system. Microsoft plans to do the same thing for its HTMLHelp
layout engine with Windows 98. It also claims to be working on Mac and Unix
version to counter Netscape's one advantage: cross-platform compatibility.

Microsoft's version has one other big advantage: it has created a
"compressed HTML" file format, so Help systems can be delivered in
essentially one file, like they are now. Netscape's technology still uses
dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of separate HTML files. All these small
files in a large Help system are major space killers, especially on larger
hard disks.

However, if you must plunge into the murky HTML-based Help pool, the major
Help tool vendors have all released upgrades that will convert existing
Help systems and create new ones. I cannot address how well they work; I
have not actually used them, largely because I have not come across a
project that can use HTML-based Help to its advantage.

A lot of discussion about HTML-based Help (almost all of it Microsoft's
HTMLHelp) is currently going on in the WINHLP-L list--including messages
about many bugs that are beign found in the 1.0 version and limitations
that this version still has.

Good luck.


At 10:32 AM 9/17/97 -0400, you wrote:
>Hi,
>
>Can anybody give us some information on HTML based help for Windows?
>
>We are looking for some conversion software and would appreciate any
suggestions out there.
>
>Thanks
>
>Tech Writing Group
>Ordinox Network Inc.
>
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--
"You don't look American"
"Everyone looks American, because Americans are from everywhere"
                                            - Doonesbury
Chuck Martin
Technical Writer, Seeker Software, Inc      | Personal
cmartin -at- seekersoft -dot- com                      | writer -at- grin -dot- net
www.seekersoft.com                          | www.grin.net/~writer

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