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Subject:Which Help is the best help? From:"Kate O'Neill" <kate -at- kathleen -dot- net> To:TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 23 Feb 2000 16:48:33 -0800
My client is trying to decide on the best help technology
for each of several apps (each app can have different help
delivery technology).
What's constraining the decision:
- One of the products will be run only in a local Windows
environment, but two of the products will be run like
thin clients through web browsers.
- The VP of Engineering doesn't want users to have to
download an applet of any kind.
Originally, I was planning to deliver MS HTML Help, but the
VP of Engineering says they've had trouble in the past with
delivering even small applets. So both ForeHelp's InterHelp
and Sun's JavaHelp are out, too.
I played with the compiler settings in ForeHelp just a
little bit to see what results I get when the HTML compiler
is turned off. They're less than desirable, but again, I
haven't spent very much time trying to tweak the results.
We're thinking that the local Windows app can run whatever
Help technology I want to use, and the two web-based apps
will rely on vanilla HTML, but I'm not thrilled about
delivering in vanilla HTML (no search or index unless they
roll their own).
