The "new" Microsoft Help format is targeted by FAR HTML, and is the one used for VS2010 Help. The group I pointed to has (free) tools for the full range of Help formats used by Microsoft, including the new format.
FAR HTML is a collection of file and HTML Help utilities for authors. If you need to quickly manipulate HTML files, or create and edit HTML Help 1.x, MS Help 2.x or MS Help Viewer 1.x projects then FAR will save you lots of time. You can safely use FAR HTML and MS Workshop side by side. Download the full working version of FAR HTML free today. If you can remember the installed help for MSDN Libraries (and how unresponsive is was), then compare the installed Help for VS2010 in terms of its speed etc. It's worth having a read of the HelpWare pages, and also The Help Guy blog. _____ Ian Thomas Victoria Park, Western Australia _____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Greg Keogh Sent: Monday, May 30, 2011 9:42 PM To: 'ozDotNet' Subject: RE: Help files >What do people use to build help files these days? It's been 5 years since I last did this, but we were in a hurry and didn't have the time or money for a special help kits like Robohelp or HDK or whatever. I was quite surprised at how easily I could create CHM files using Frontpage and Microsoft's HTML Help Workshop. Frontpage helped me organise all the html files into folders and give a project view of the whole lot, and it helped with hyperlinks between chapters/files, and it had spell checking. I had to manually keep the help project file updated with the list of source html files, but that wasn't too much bother, and it just compiled them and spat out a quite acceptable CHM file. This may work well for you as well if your needs are not too complex or large. There's been a real zoo of help file formats over previous years and it get irritating trying to run with the trends. However, the humble old CHM file still seem to be sticking around for now. Perhaps I'm out of date, if anyone knows of a new trend/direction in help files, let us know. Actually, does Frontpage still exist? If not, does something like Expression Web (or Dreamweaver or something else) help create and manage a "project" of html help topics and links? Greg
