Note that :

1) they are poorly arranged
2) they may have mistakes
3) they don’t credit others work properly or at all

They were for me but now I think maybe others will find them useful so here they are:

*Note that the file is larger ~7000KB and 274 pages worth.

From one hand the web help can exist as a set of web pages and have quite simple structure. On the other hand more complicated structure of web help has a frameset sidebar that has a table of content and gives a possibility to use search and HTML Help.

Web help solutions have both pluses and minuses. First of all they give the potential buyer understandable product preview. They are always updated and can be see using a regular browser. So it doesn’t require any specific technical authoring software. Also usage of a DocBook XSL system gives a possibility to produce any kind of technical documentation in PDF format ready for printing, as HTML ready for publishing on-line or as WebHelp on CD/DVD-roms.

Unfortunately, web help strongly depends on user’s internet connection. Despite the fact that the majority of modern tools can provide context-sensitive web help, in some cases it can be still a problem.

Another way of getting some assistance is to use online help. Online help is any kind of information usually devoted to a specific topic and is provided to the user by means of computer software. Online help introduces the information on the variety of subjects, but more often it is used for giving the user assistance answering the questions on how to use a software application or operating system. If online help is connected to the state of application, that the user is currently operating, with the help of the link, that online help is usually called Context-sensitive help.

Online help can be created with help authoring tools using a wide range of formats: e.g. proprietary (HTML, JavaHelp, Oracle) and open-standard (PDF). To these tools belong DITA and the Open source tool DocBookXSL that is a wonderful resource for generating help files in the following formats: PDF, JavaHelp, WebHelp, eBook, etc.

There are special platforms for delivering help systems. These systems developed by Microsoft for the Microsoft Windows operating system are:

Not open to public:

• Microsoft QuickHelp (written for MS-DOS and OS/2 called QuickHelp)
• Help command (MS-DOS, OS/2 and Windows)
• Help and Support Center (windows Me and Windows XP)
• Microsoft Help 2(.hxs) (the Microsoft name for HTML Help 2.0 used as a format for Visual Studio .NET, MSDN Library and TechNet products, Office 2007)
• AP Help 1.0 (.hls) ( based on Microsoft Assistance Markup Language and developed especially for Windows Vista and will be probably used by Microsoft, OEMs, and certain corporate users. The Assistance Platform Help 2.0 engine is currently on hold.
• Microsoft Help Viewer 1.0 (.mshc) ( developed for VisoualStudio 2010)

Open to public:

• Microsoft WinHelp (.hlp) (Based on the Rich Text Format, and was included with all Windows  operating systems apart from Windows Vista, where it is available for downloading)
• HTML Help (Another name is Microsoft Compiled HTML Help and uses HTML, images and JavaScript and other data as a base.)

Other platforms:

• AmigaGuide (.guide) (the official hypertext document file format made for the Amiga.)
• Apple Help (.HELP) (Apple Computer’s proprietary platform for the Mac OS 8.5+ operating system.)
• Flare (MadCap Software’s cross-platform, WebHelp based on browsers)
• Sun JavaHelp (.js) (made by Sun Microsystems is platform-independent. It is platform-independent (so it runs on any platform that supports the Java Runtime Environment (JRE)), was written in Java programming language )
• Oracle Help (developed for Java (OHJ) and for Web (OHW))
• Help library (.HLB) (the official file format designed for VMS.)
• DotNetHelp (A new Windows format which supports .NET applications.)
• Texinfo (or “info” is the official documentation system for the GNU project.)
• Unix man pages (the standard method used to document Unix commands.)
• Information Presentation Facility (IPF) (used by IBM’s OS/2 system.)

It has several basic and auxiliary functions. To the first group belong file input and help output. File input either allows importing a text produced by any kind of program or gives the technical writer an opportunity to create a text using an editor within the tool. Depending on what HAT tool you use the format of the imported file can be different. For example, ASCII, HTML, OpenOffice Writer , Microsoft Word, Microsoft WinHelp, Microsoft Compressed HTML Help etc. HAT also can put the files out as a compiled Help file and non-compiled file formats. The formats that are normally used for outputting are: WinHelp(*.HLP),  Microsoft Compiled HTML Help (*.CHM),  Adobe PDF, XML,HTML, JavaHelp and so on.

As it has been stated HAT tools have also some auxiliary functions for technical authoring. The functions include: automatic or assisted Index generation, automatic table of contents, spelling checker, image editing, image hotspot editing, import and export of text in XML files, for exchange with computer-assisted translation programs.

Tech Authors, however, have to deal with projects consisting of many files. These could be help projects composed of multiple XML source files, or InDesign documents with linked images. These could be checked into CogniDox as zip archives, but this is too much trouble to be worthwhile. If the document can’t be uploaded in a single step, then I feel that it shouldn’t be uploaded at all. Complex documents need a Content Management System that understands sets of linked, hierarchical files. If a complex document can be compiled to a PDF for reviewing then that is what should be checked into CogniDox. It is then up to the author to figure out how to store the component files separately and safely.

P.S. What’s wrong with storing complex projects as zip archives? you may be asking. The first problem is that in our case these archives are often huge and contain files, particularly images, that might not change from one version to another. This means a lot of unnecessary duplication. Our CogniDox administrator assures me that our 1 TB server will never fill up, but I am not so sanguine.

A typical product brochure done in InDesign has a packaged, zipped size of 150 MB. Let’s say that each brochure goes through 10 issues in its lifetime. That’s 1.5 GB per brochure, so we could fit about 650 of these documents on our server. I guess that’s a few years of work, so maybe I shouldn’t worry. By the time we fill up the disk, let’s hope we will have a server that can back up several TB of data every night.

There is a second problem, though. It’s easy to assemble all the linked files in an InDesign document using the ‘Package’ command, but other document types are not as easy. For example, our manuals are written using Help & Manual, which is a fine program but has no automatic method for collecting all the linked files into one place. It goes halfway there, by allowing you to zip up all of the help topics together with any ‘baggage files’ that you have manually specified, but it will not go and fetch linked images that live elsewhere on your server. As I said above, only a CMS can handle this sort of thing automatically.

The new help manual is indexed and searchable. So even if you don’t know where to look, you can search the manual and find pages that include your search teams. Our new help docs include everything from the Quick Start Guide to information about Online Sports Registration and our Sports League Software. Enjoy!

Anyway, as I was digging around in their user help I came across this bit of advice:

Important warning:

Don’t try to use the Width: and Height: settings to scale your video, these options are only for setting the correct original size! If you scale with these settings quality will be very poor (i.e. really, really, really bad), particularly in Flash video and animation files.

Who says a user guide can’t have personality? I love it! It actually made me laugh out loud. When you’ve got a customer trying to grasp an entirely new system, show them you’re human too. They’ll love your product even more – and your company, too!