TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
> The SME's objection to using HTML-based help is that opening up the help
> file will require opening up another browser window which can be easily
> confused with the application browser window which must not be closed.
> Can anyone provide me with information about this?
You can design your HTML-based help window so that it doesn't look like a browser
window at all. You can put buttons at the top for navigation, use a different
arrangement of white space and type face than the browser defaults, etc. That
way the help window doesn't look related to the browser window, and your users
shouldn't have any problem distinguishing between the two.
One of our clients has an HTML-based help application that works like this, and
it's pretty spiffy.
