The original WinHelp FAQ was written for the comp.os.ms- windows.programmer.winhelp newsgroup, and was last updated about September 1994. At the time, WinHelp version 3.1 was the latest and greatest, and it's sister program for multimedia developers was called Viewer 2.0. WinHelp 4.0-the new 32-bit version of WinHelp-was included with Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0. MediaView was released about the same time as the 32-bit replacement for Viewer 2.0.
Much of what was written about WinHelp 3.1 and designing help files still applies today. And there are still many people running Windows 3.1, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, or Windows NT 3.51, all of which rely on WinHelp 3.1 to display help files. Therefore, this FAQ still contains information about both WinHelp 3.1 and WinHelp 4.0.
In August 1997, Microsoft released HTML Help as the successor to WinHelp 4.0. This FAQ does not attempt to answer questions about the new HTML Help, which will at some point acquire a FAQ of its own.
If you've ever hit the help menu item in a Windows program, you've seen WinHelp. WinHelp is the program that provides the hypertext help system for Windows programs. WinHelp is actually a very complex and extendable help system. It allows programmers to add their own functionality through the use of macros and .DLLs. A number of third parties have developed such extensions for WinHelp, which are often available as shareware.
Windows 3.1 and Windows NT 3.51 (or earlier versions) use version 3.1 of WinHelp. Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 use version 4.0 of WinHelp. The new version of WinHelp was created to take advantage of Microsoft's 32-bit operating systems, but also added some new features for both users and the authors of help files. While WinHelp 4.0 looks the same running on Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0, there are some subtle differences that affect users. These are explained in the Q&A section of this FAQ.
Viewer is the short name for Microsoft's Multimedia Viewer. Released approximately at the same time as WinHelp 3.1, Viewer was designed for creating stand-alone multimedia titles (as opposed to online help for applications). Viewer and WinHelp 3.1 were identical in many respects, and much of what applied to WinHelp applied to Viewer. Both used RTF files for content and formatting, and both were compiled (Viewer had its own compiler). Viewer's user interface for displaying titles was more flexible in some respects, to accommodate the needs of multimedia authors. Viewer also included a full-text search (FTS) engine, which was missing from WinHelp 3.1.
MediaView is the replacement for Viewer 2.0. Unlike Viewer, which provided a User Interface (UI), MediaView requires you to develop your own UI (using a language like VisualBasic or C++). MediaView provides only the mechanism for displaying content within your UI, which is still very similar to WinHelp. Allowing the author to develop the UI makes MediaView a powerful Multimedia tool, although a knowledge of programming is required to take advantage of that power.
MediaView is still available from Microsoft, although support has been dropped in favor of HTML Help.
HTML Help is Microsoft's name for their HTML-based replacement for WinHelp. More generally, HTML Help refers to any online help (or documentation) that uses HTML pages for content. Microsoft, Netscape, Sun, Oracle, and some other companies have released systems for developing and implementing HTML Help. Each is offering development kits for their flavor of HTML-based Help. Microsoft's version is called HTML Help, Netscape offers NetHelp, and Sun has JavaHelp (Java-based Help).
Each company has extended what can be done with HTML to make the system more "usable" as a means of providing online user assistance. Note that some of these solutions are aimed specifically at Java development. For more information, you can visit each company's HTML Help related site:
> CreativeSoft's Jelp - www.jelp.com
> Microsoft's HTML Help - www.microsoft.com/worksho p/author/htmlhelp/
> Netscape's NetHelp - home.netscape.com/eng/help/
> Oracle Help for Java - www.oracle.com/products/to ols/ohj/index.html
> Sun's JavaHelp - java.sun.com/products/javahelp/ index.html
This document is written as a supplement to the WinHelp Discussion List (winhlp-l @humberc.on.ca) and the comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.winhelp newsgroup. It is meant to help answer some of the more common questions about WinHelp. It also supposed to provide people with sources of information about authoring and extending WinHelp .HLP files.
Think this FAQ is deficient in one or more areas? Let me know. Tell me what you'd like to see. My product and documentation lists are incomplete. I don't have time to track down all products, so if you have one, let me know. I'll gladly add your product to the list. If you're a user of a product that's not listed, let me know about it.
I monitor the WinHelp discussion list for common questions to add to the Question and Answer section. I also check in on the CompuServe Help Authoring forum and the comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.winhelp newsgroup occasionally. If you have questions that you think should be included, let me know.
Send all comments, suggestions, etc., to cmunro@bigfoot.com.