Re: Context Sensitive Help

["Dana Worley" <dana -at- campbellsci -dot- com>]

On Tuesday, June 06, 2006, cupton -at- syclone -dot- net wrote: 

> What do you think? Have you encountered this problem before, and how
> did you approach the Sales people? The customer?

It depends upon the application. I find context sensitive help is 
useful and adds value if the application has a lot of controls (e.g., 
text or numeric entry fields) and those controls have a finite list of 
valid entries or the field names are not that descriptive. For 
example, some sort of form that the user completes or a 
programming editor where you provide help on each parameter in 
an instruction. However, if your help is  mostly conceptual, then 
context sensitivity may not provide value equal to what it will cost to 
implement.  

If the customer is asking for it, however, I would give it serious 
consideration. There's obviously a reason why the customer is 
asking -- maybe you can determine the reason and then consider if 
context sensitive help is the best solution, or if another route should 
be taken.

Regards,

Dana W.

***************************
Dana Worley
Manager, Software Support Group
Campbell Scientific, Inc. 
Microsoft MVP, Windows Help 2003-2006


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