tips on online help

Tips on Online Help

Tharun Unni

About this Presentation

• Access Points in Online Help

• Life Cycle

• Choosing a Delivery Format

• Authoring Tool

• Authoring Process

• Intergrating with the Software

• Platform-Specific Issues

Access Points in Online Help

• Task-Oriented Topics– Table of Contents (TOC)– Topics

• Context-Sensitive Help:– Dialog Level– Field Level (What’s This Help)

• Other Modes of Access – Index – Search– Favorites

Life Cycle

• Decide the Delivery Format• Choose an Authoring Tool

– Use a Help Authoring Tool– Use a Publishing Tool and convert the source

using the Help Authoring Tool

• Follow the Documentation Life Cycle• Integration and Delivery• Platform-Specific Issues

Choosing a Delivery Format

• Platform-Dependent (compiled)– CHM – HLP files

• Platform-Independent – HTML/XML files – Applets – Images

Choose an Authoring Tool

• HTML + Notepad + Compiler• Authoring tool

– RoboHelp: • Author in RoboHelp• Convert from other sources such as Word or

FrameMaker

– Webworks Publisher• Convert from other sources such as Word or

FrameMaker

Authoring Process

• Typical documentation development life cycle• Building Blocks

– HTML, XML, or RTF

– Images

– Project Files• Build or Project File (HPJ or HHP)

• Table of Contents (CNT)

• Index (IDX)

Integrating with Software

• Compiled– Decide who will assign the help topic IDs– Include MAP files in the Project File

• #define topic_name NUM

• Authoring tool may have an automatically generate MAP File option.

• If you cannot disable this, take a backup copy of your map file.

Platform-Specific Issues

• On Unix and Linux:– filenames are case-sensitive– filename should not contain blank spaces– path is indicated by “/” and not “\”– directory access privileges should be

configured– use relative path for images and URLs– Netscape is a popular browser