Online Help
Introduction
Throughout my career, I've worked on more online help projects than I can remember. On this page I share my history with various online help systems from my first projects to my most recent webhelp projects.
Winhelp
Winhelp was the first online help system I worked with. It was the first system to become an output of single sourcing. Early on, I loved Winhelp and still kind of miss it because its native markup was rich text format (RTF). RTF was a more robust markup language because of the inclusion of style sheets.
Winhelp examples
JavaHelp
JavaHelp systems used for cross-platform help for firmware configuration
Microsoft HTML Help (CHM)
Winhelp has been deprecated since hackers used .hlp files to deliver malware. CHM is compiled HTML help. Originally, these help files were more limited than Winhelp since early CSS was also sparse. However, I worked on those files for many years.
HTML help examples
Webhelp
Webhelp is how most software help is now delivered. I find it personally inconvenient because eventually links break. Context sensitivity is another hurdle for developers and technical writers to manage. Unless you use a tool like RoboHelp, you could end up breaking context sensitive links. I do believe software help should be local on the computer you're using.
Online help is one of my favorite project types. Well planned and precise context-sensitive-help increase product adoption and keep users engaged.