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The new Help you're seeing (Office and that) is actually all on the Web.
They make it look a bit different than a regular browser experience because
they want it to meld with the program for which the user is getting Help.
As far as I know there is no way for an outside company to write for that.
You would need to work with your own company Web site to do something
similar. MS is doing this work so that they can provide up to date Help.
You can still provide .chm as long as the viewer is available on the user's
computer. As noted in another post earlier MS is still providing .chm files
so more than likely the .chm viewer is there. Test on a computer you think
your users will have to make sure. Otherwise you can, last I looked,
provide the .chm viewer as part of your install.
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+sbuckley=onlinewriter -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+sbuckley=onlinewriter -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of Tony Chung
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2009 3:05 PM
To: TECHWR-L Writing
Subject: Re: CHMs, DFDs, and TGIF
On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 2:10 PM, Combs, Richard
<richard -dot- combs -at- polycom -dot- com>wrote:
> Tony Chung wrote:
>
> > I don't know what MS was thinking by deprecating the CHM in favour of
> > Windows HTML help. CHMs work great for small help systems. HTML Help,
> > and to some extent, Eclipse Help Center and AIR, are great for
> > presenting standalone web-based help, with an offline cost of about 20MB
> for
> > a run-time web server.
> >
>
> But CHMs _are_ Microsoft HTML Help (the .chm extension derives from
> "compiled HTML"). They're what the Microsoft Help Workshop creates.
>
Okay, get me on a technicality. HTML is used in both, only CHMs are compiled
by HTML Help Workshop. The "new" HTML help provides a separate help viewer
to replace the compiled system, because a security feature preventing code
execution from local file systems breaks the CHM. (Easily fixed by a
registry hack, but still... why implement security only to disable it?)
That's why I called the CHM deprecated, regardless of how popular the format
is.
> The deprecated help format is WinHelp (.hlp files). About the time Vista
> came out, IIRC, MS made a bunch of noise about replacing the compiled
> HTML format with a new XML-based help format, but that still hasn't
> happened. Check out this MS Developer Network topic:
>
>http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms728460%28VS.85%29.aspx
>
>
I do like their online help viewer, though. That and Eclipse are probably
the direction we're heading. I echo Robert's complaint about Adobe AIR. I
only mention it because it's just another RIA option.
> Richard G. Combs
> Senior Technical Writer
> Polycom, Inc.
> richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
> 303-223-5111
> ------
> rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
> 303-777-0436
> ------
>
>
--
Tony Chung: Creative Communications
Cell: +1-604-710-5164
Email: tonyc -at- tonychung -dot- ca * Web: http://tonychung.ca
Skype: tonychung.ca * GTalk/MSN: tonychung -dot- ca -at- gmail -dot- com
Twitter: @techcom * Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tonychung.ca
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Are you looking for one documentation tool that does it all? Author,
build, test, and publish your Help files with just one easy-to-use tool.
Try the latest Doc-To-Help 2009 v3 risk-free for 30-days at: http://www.doctohelp.com/
Help & Manual 5: The all-in-one help authoring tool. True single- sourcing --
generate 8 different formats and as many different versions as you need
from just one project. Fast and intuitive. http://www.helpandmanual.com/
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