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LoneWriter9
Participant
December 1, 2010
Answered

WebHelp and Field-Level Help

  • December 1, 2010
  • 1 reply
  • 1679 views

Years back I maintained a Microsoft HTML Help project and a What's This Help Composer project for a desktop application. In 2005, I converted my Microsoft HTML Help project to a WebHelp project and it went up on the Web. To save on translation costs, the What's This Help project was removed from the application.

Now, customers have indicated that they want the old field-level What's This Help back again?  My questions are:

1.  Using RoboHelp 7, I am under the assumption that I cannot integrate a What's This Help project into my WebHelp project (correct me if I am wrong), but can I create a standalone What's This Help project?

2.  Can I publish a standalone What's This Help project to the Web like I did with my WebHelp project? Or, must the What's This Help project be installed on each PC locally?

3.  If the What's This Help is not a viable option, what are my other field-level help choices?  Right now, I have help topics in my WebHelp project mapped to the Help buttons in windows.  Could I map help topics in my WebHelp project to field names?

All help would be most appreciated.

Thanks,

LoneWriter9

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Peter Grainge

.HLP and .CHM files are for local installation, not for use from a server.

What's This help is not a webhelp option.

It sounds like you are going to end up with two systems. Local for field help and web for the rest. Seems very disjointed.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

1 reply

Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
December 2, 2010

Try a different approach. What you are after is Context Sensitve Help at field level. If you have a topic for every field then your developers can call that and it can be done so that the help opens with the tripane window showing the required field level help.

Keep this in mind though. We are moving away from it for two prime reasons.

  1. Our help had grown to over 12,000 topics to accomodate that so it was a pain to maintain.
  2. The users who saw what we proposed preferred it.

What we are doing is moving to screen level CSH. When the user gets the help they get the page(s) for that screen and they include tables listing and describing all the fields. They scan down the list for the field they require and then see the description alongside. What they find better is they read about that field but also see it the help for other fields on the same screen that they might not have looked up before.

So it suited us and the users preferred it. I would do some hard talking with the users before making the change as you are upping the maintenance.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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LoneWriter9Author
Participant
December 2, 2010

Thanks Peter for your advice. I totally understand why a separate help topic for each field would significantly increase the number of help topics in a project. Since I already have context-sensitive help topics mapped to the Help button in most windows of our application, your suggestion would be the easiest to do. Because of the ease of maintenance of this option, I will highly recommend it to my management.

But I need to present all options to my management. With that in mind:

1.  Could I still do the old fashioned pop-up windows using the What's This Help Composer and make it a standalone project (since the main help for my application is WebHelp)?

2.  If I can, could the .hlp be placed on the Web, or would it need to be stored locally?

Thanks for your help.

LoneWriter9

Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Peter GraingeCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
December 2, 2010

.HLP and .CHM files are for local installation, not for use from a server.

What's This help is not a webhelp option.

It sounds like you are going to end up with two systems. Local for field help and web for the rest. Seems very disjointed.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

Use the menu (bottom right) to mark the Best Answer or Highlight particularly useful replies. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here.
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